One Year Ago - April 30, 2009

• I left work early that day.
• Stopped at the bank to break into my retirement IRA (cause first time home buyers can).
• I wired the largest amount of money we've ever had in a bank account to our attorney. (I'll never be able to save that much again).
• We drove down to the house that was to be ours and stood around the kitchen counter signing the closing paperwork. 
• Then we moved in a kitchen table and chairs to finish signing the paperwork. 
• Now a year later the house looks much better and I've learned to accept that just about every penny will be spent on the house, until of course we find something else to spend our money on.  

Home Sweet Home.

I Have No Luck with BlackBerry Devices

My first BlackBerry was a Storm (the full screen touch one) and I thought I was so cool. My brother gave it to me and I used the shit out of that thing. I loved having internet on a phone that wouldn't make websites all messed up, I used it as an MP3 player, emailed at all times and not to mention my love for BlackBerry Messenger. Then I dropped it not once, but kinda a lot. One day I dropped it and the screen was BLACK and stayed black. I couldn't see to call home or tell if it was even on. I was on my way to try and get it fixed or replaced and I dropped it to show my friend that it would blip a little when smacked around (no more harm could be done) and the darn screen started working again. For a few weeks the screen would periodically black out again but nothing so bad that a few smacks couldn't fix. Then one day it went black for a long time and it was the last straw so my favorite hubby (and my only one) paid to upgrade my phone to a Storm 2 (I was due for a new every two). I dropped the new phone once or twice but always on the carpet and chalked it up to my usual clumsiness.

Yesterday I did a number on my phone. We were at Lowe's picking up a few things for the house and we're standing in the garden center and while I was trying to put my phone in my purse my husband sees something and I follow him. This has nothing to do with hand eye coordination because there was no eye. Just bad hand coordination because when I turn to follow him I messed up the path from my hand-with-phone into my purse and CRASH. Phone falls face flat (as it always does) the force sends the back cover flying off and the battery pops out. I think no biggie this has happened and I'll just pop the battery back in and the cover on and then just have to endure the rebooting process. Nope... I flip the phone over and I am greeted with the below image...

Thankfully it still works but the danger is the shards of glass that keep falling out. So I've been using my phone at a minimum and actually have it in a little zippy bag it can be fixed. Thank goodness my brother is a BlackBerry guru and can help me out. Oh and I am now buying a case for the phone.

Hello My Name is Anna Fielding and this is my husband Walter...

... or better known as Shelley Long and Tom Hanks in The Money Pit.

Owning a house has kinda gotten old. Don't get me wrong it's totally awesome to have our own house until that particular time of month rolls around when the mortgage statement and utility bills come in. Oh don't forget those bank statements that constantly remind me that we are starring in our own version of The Money Pit.

There are bright sides to it all, for example that broken oven I wrote about in my last post ... it's getting replaced at no cost to us, well okay just a fee for the service call. When we bought the house the owner offered a home warranty and if you read my blog it has come in quite handy. We've had the fridge fixed, the water heater replaced and now the oven replaced. Definitely worth every penny. It's coming up almost a whole year owning the house (April 30!) and we have been receiving notices about renewing the warranty on our own. It's not cheap, at least for the plan that was provided for us, which we figured was about $800 for the year. It covered a lot of things but it is so different when it was provided to us versus us having to write a check for the amount. We are also looking into the warranty type plan offered by our utility company. It's far cheaper from what I understand but I don't know much about what it actually covers just yet.

Just to reflect back,on some things I wish I knew before we bought the house or when we were looking...

• If you have a wood burning fireplace with a brick chimney or lots of brick some place, check for spall, or flaking.  I'll post more about it later but we've had to have some chimney work done due to a leak it caused in one of the bedrooms. 
• Get a really good home inspector. We had a guy that a friend used and he sounded good but we realized that most inspectors are really jack-of-all-trades-masters-of-nothing. Our inspector didn't even go up into our attic which we are kicking ourselves for. But lesson learned and we've moved on.
• Me personally, I'll never buy another "used" house.
• Hire a painter if you can afford it. Just the thought of painting makes me shudder.
• Don't buy Benjamin Moore paints unless you're willing to splurge for more pricey rollers and brushes or hire someone. BM paint is all the rage and even more so since they've teamed up with Pottery Barn. But their paint is so so thick that while you may only need one coat to cover, if you don't use the pricier stuff to apply it you will be cursing the paint. Behr paint at Home Depot is a decent amount cheaper and covers well with you one step up from bottom of the line paint supplies. 
• A decent amount of contractors are NUTS! They either unresponsive, somewhat unprofessional or do a crap job. You can't win. We had a contractor last year for the chimney who said he'd take the job and then he never showed and was never reachable again. Our latest chimney contractor was more nuts, looked like they did a good job but now is unresponsive for a final small part of the job we want done. (No money has changed hands for that part so no worries).

How did cavemen bake before the invention of the oven?

A week ago on Sunday I had to bake some goodies for a bake sale at work for babies or rather March of Dimes. My company's charity of choice is March of Dimes which promotes healthy babies through prevention of birth defects, premature birth and infant mortality. Anyhow, so it's the eve of the bake sale and I offered to bring in two items, K - Bars and strawberry cupcakes. The K - Bars were no bake so I did that first thinking I would get the challenge of making something for the first time out of the way.

I turned the oven on to preheat. Then I proceeded to  mix the cupcake batter and pour it into the cupcake cups. I checked the oven and thought it was a little cool but figured it needed more time. I wandered to my desk and Googled away. Thirty minutes later I went back down and that stupid oven wasn't even hot yet. Thankfully hubby came into the kitchen to check on me and I took the opportunity to mention the oven was being funny (I think I would have waited hours before I realized something was wrong). Hubby started knocking at things with a flashlight (because it works miracles) but nothing. As he attempted to get a replacement part at Home Depot at 7:00pm on a Sunday for a 30 year old oven; I headed over to my father-in-law's house to use his oven (thank goodness we decided to live ten minutes away from him).

More than a week later we've had a repair guy sent by the home warranty company and he attempted to order the part but was sent the wrong part. Now the warranty company has a chance to find a part or we get a credit of some sort to get a replacement oven. I would like that oven because I keep forgetting my oven is broken make plans to cook something in the oven and just when I get excited reality hits and I think, "Crap that damn oven is broken and the toaster oven is too small even though I got the big one!" Tonight I told my husband I would bake him brownies in this crazy pan his mom got us... but the pan doesn't fit in the toaster oven....

Vintage Furniture

A couple weeks back I was browsing the Popsugar's sister site, CasaSugar and came across a post about a 1960s Faux Bamboo Dresser. I thought the dresser was totally awesome and I was in love because it would be perfect in the yellow (now not leaky) room we just painted with the monkey rug. But where on earth would I find one and for such an awesome price (she paid $69 bucks for a dresser!)?

Fast forward to this past Saturday morning. We were running around the house picking up messes left during the week and doing other random things you do when you own a house. At some point I got sidetracked and sat down at my desk and do what I always do, start to look something up and then the internet just kidnaps me and I click on anything that catches my eye and Google whatever pops into my pretty little head. My brain told me to Google headboards (because our two beautiful bedrooms need to grow up and get some headboards like grownups have and I am a grownup). I somehow and smartly, ended up on craigslist and came across a local post of not just a dresser but a whole set of the bamboo furniture I coveted!

I exchanged a few emails with the seller (who was about an hour away) and on Sunday we drove two cars and picked up all the pieces (dresser, mirror, desk, chair, headboard, and nightstand). These are the seller's pictures but now that I spent the better part of Sunday cleaning up the pieces I'll take some pictures of it in the actual room.

This set is Thomasville stamped with 1966. My research tells me it's the Allegro set and there are sellers of pieces to the whole set all over the U.S. A seller on craigslist had the lingerie chest (which btw I would give my left leg for - because it's not my driving foot) but they're some where in Louisiana and that should tell me to shut up and stop thinking about another piece for the set. I already have my work cut out because I am going to have to strip the paint because it's flaking off and repaint the whole set. Off to pick the new color...

Bedding Dilemma Slightly Resolved

In a previous post I presented a few options for our green bedroom's bedding. None of them worked out. The Liberty of London Paisley set from Target that I thought would work never shipped and I happened upon it in the store and it was kinda pretty ugly up close. So I continued my search.

Last weekend I came across this quilt set at Homegoods and while my friend and I decided it looked decent...

It looked charming maybe even a little country-ish and girly. Hubby was okay with it. Then my friend told me her husband said it look liked an old lady's room. Well that made up my mind, I wasn't go for the "old lady" look. I found bedding I had previously swooned over at Target, the Dwell Studio Casablanca, and threw it on the bed next to the "old lady" stuff to get a good comparison.

What a difference! I absolutely love how much of the blue is in the Dwell Studio bedding and how the green is more of an accent. The other quilt was just too busy and it definitely wasn't stepping up to the plate against the bold green color of the room. Now for the full effect....

Much better! Now my dilemma is I only have one pillow case. I apparently purchase the LAST ONE in all of Target across the country and online (I know this because I emailed them to search their inventory). So my plan now (since I am committed to this bedding) is to order another quilt and make my own damn pillows. They'll be a little bit different than the one that's on the bed (which I am keeping) but will match. Now that the bedding is chosen I can work on curtain rods (I've got the curtains) and decor.