Ding Dong!

Since buying a house & moving into a subdivision, rings on my doorbell and knocks on our door have increased. I am the type of person who doesn't answer unless I am expecting someone or the person on the other side looks harmless. But due to the weather warming up, these knocks have increased and have the money in my wallet has decreased! Here's the knocks in a nice little list.

#1 - Girl Scouts. Okay, I'll admit I wasn't unhappy when they knocked on my door. I don't mind buying things from schools or organizations, especially kids. I remember being a kid, knocking on someones door, and feeling hurt when they turned me down. So when the GS came, I politely bought a box of Tagalongs and Thin Mints and my waistline hated it for me later :]

#2 - Republican Party. Okay, I am not a Republican, but I listened to this old guys speech and then told him I wasn't yet registered to vote in the state of AZ, so sorry pal, I can't sign your petition. I'm not going to sign it regardless - I know nothing about the guy your talking about. I'd like to research a candidate before I just sign my name to some piece of paper.

#3 - Cookie Dough. This was for the local high school's cheerleaders. Granted I'm probably not going to even make the white macademia nut cookie dough I ordered, I again remembered my childhood door knocking, and paid the $15 for it. Besides, they told me my dog was cute :]

#4 - Meat Guy. I knew I should've turned this guy away right when I answered, but I get suckered in everytime. Everytime. So I let him in and he shows me all these kinds of meats - for $400 or something. I didn't want to spend the money, but when you break it down, it really is cost effective. I bought 9.5 lbs of beef, 9 lbs of chicken, and 3lbs of salmon for $190. It sounds like a lot, but the beef is steaks (Ribeye, T-Bones, etc). I hardly ever buy beef because I for one don't really eat it. My freezer is stocked for the next 6 months I'd say!

#5 - Random Creepy Guy. Okay this one happened about an hour ago and I didn't answer. It's Saturday and my husband is sick and we're still in our PJ's. Anyway, he rings the bell and stands there for literally 5 minutes. No exaggeration. Then he knocks and stands there for another 2 minutes, finally leaving. It was creepy and he was old. I don't know what he wanted, and I don't really care. I swear he was peeking in my house too. This is our front door. It's hard to see in, but if you put your face close enough, you can see inside on certain parts of the glass.

So there you have it. I'm sure more will come and knock and I'm sure there are more who will be ignored or get my money. Sometimes I miss apartment living - no one ever bothered me there!

From Small Space to Large Space.

If there's anything I've learned in the past three months since becoming a homeowner is that it's expensive. My husband and I went from an 800 square foot apartment to a house more than double that. And now I am finding I need more furniture. Yesterday the hubby and I made a stop at Lowes since we had a gift card from my parents as a housewarming gift. We'd decided long ago that we wanted an outdoor fire pit. We looked around, and a few caught my eye. But we decided to get a chiminea instead, which are very popular out here. Here is a picture of the one we bought:

So that's one thing off the list of things we need to buy! In my kitchen, there is a counter that overhangs into the dining room, so now we need bar stools. These are the ones I'm considering:
I like the red because that is the color theme we are going for in the kitchen, and I also wanted stools with backs on them. The material is microfiber, which I know is a good fabric for cat owners. While I like them a lot, the hubby is not sold on them (yet!).

Another piece of furniture we need - a table for the front entry way. It really needs one, it is so empty by the door! I really like this one from Target:

Nothing fancy - just something to put there!

There are so many other things we want to buy - patio furniture, a grill, and God knows what else. It's expensive moving from a smaller place to a larger place and buying the furniture to fill it up. I keep telling myself that it doesn't all have to happen at once. I can buy a piece here, buy a piece there, and one day it will all come together!

Oh Yeah, I Live Here Now.

My husband and I only have one vehicle, which is my car I bought before we got married after I totaled my other car. Anyway, it doesn't really bother me that we only have one vehicle, as my husband HATES driving! You may find it odd - I did for a long time, but the fact of the matter is he's never really drove (with the exception of military vehicles) since he grew up in NYC where people prefer the subway to cars. He actually didn't even get his license until he was 21! He did have his own car, but we ended up selling it because it had so many problems. So anyway, I take my husband to work every morning & pick him up in the afternoon. The other day I was pulled out of my driveway to pick him up from work and started heading down to the stop sign on the corner of our street. A woman in a mini-van across the street & a few houses down [i.e. kiddy-corner] decides to start pulling out of her driveway and into the street as I'm driving past her house. I literally had to drive on the other side of the street because I thought she was going to hit me - she didn't even stop at all. So me being me, I flash her a dirty smirk and carried on my way.

As I thought about this later in the day it crossed my mind that I live here now, as in for an extended period of time. As in I may see this woman many times over the next few years and perhaps I shouldn't be giving her dirty looks, no matter how right I think I am and how wrong I think she is. So I am going to attempt to not be such a snot to people who don't know me, I don't want to be known in the neighborhood as that bitchy lady :]

Update on Life

It has been so long since I blogged, but I have been so incredibly busy! The biggest piece of news is that my husband and are officially homeowners! We closed on the scheduled date of Wednesday October 14. I had actually called our realtor earlier in the day to see if he had heard anything about us closing, and he hadn't, so I thought it would happen on the following day, but he called me a few hours later and told us to come get our keys because we had the house! I hadn't posted the pictures of the house because I didn't want to jinx it in some way, but for those who are interested, you can view the pictures here. So after we got the keys, we started transferring our stuff from our roommates aparment into the house. And then I had to drive a little over an hour to the airport in Tucson to pick up my friend Kelsey - so needless to say, I was very busy that day!

So the next day, Kelsey and I drove up to Glendale, which is a suburb of Phoenix, the go to a hockey game. Granted it wasn't my Predators playing, but I didn't care because I just wanted to see hockey, any hockey would do! So we watch the Phoenix Coyotes take on the St. Louis Blues (Kelsey's 2nd fave team). The Coyotes won in overtime, but it was still a good game, and great to see our former goalie Mason again - I heart him! It was also weird to see our former player Fiddler do well, haha. We drove back to Sierra Vista that night and were so tired we just went straight to bed. The rest of her time here, we hung out, ran errands, and finally felt connected to the world again when I got my internet hooked up, haha. Kelsey left on Monday and I was sad to see her go - it was nice to have one of my best friends out here, even if all we did was hang out not doing a whole lot.

So we thought the Army was going to ship our stuff out here free of charge, well we were wrong. They wanted to charge nearly $3000 to do it, and I really didn't want to drain my savings to do so. So the hubby and I are flying out to TN on November 11, loading our stuff into a truck on the 12th, and driving right back out here. Yeah it's going to be a lot of work, but the Army will pay us $7500 to do it, and I think we'll only be spending about $2000 to do it ourselves. As of right now, we have two new couches we bought and a new bedroom set, but other than that's it's pretty empty. Oh well, soon enough we'll have our stuff, not looking forward to driving that truck though, haha.

So that's my update. I feel like I wrote a lot, so I try to update more often so I don't have to write as much, haha.

Annoyed.

When I woke up this morning, I looked at my phone and realized I had a missed call from my realtor and our mortgage broker. I immediately took this as a good sign, but I was wrong. I called our realtor first and he told me he had good news and bad news - which to me is always just bad news. He said that he wasn't sure if we'd be able to close by Wednesday because the mortgage underwriter was taking a long time. Something that should've only taken a week has taken two. So that was the bad news, the good news was that if they don't make the deadline, then they pay us $1300. Believe me, $1300 would be nice, that's essentially the rest of our closing costs, but I could care less because I just want to be in my home! Plus, my friend Kelsey is flying into town on Wednesday and I don't want her to have to stay in a hotel. So after I talked to the realtor, I call the mortgage broker back. He told me to go ahead and set up our homeowners insurance. I guess to make it go faster in case the loan does indeed come through this week. I was really hoping to close by the end of this week so we could go furniture shopping this weekend up in Tucson, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen.

Aside from that, my husband called the movers yesterday and they referred us to the Fort Campbell Transportation office. Who told us it would probably be 3-4 weeks until we got our stuff. Mostly because it takes 10 days to process the paperwork. Annoying to say the least.

So that's all that's new with me. Hope to have a better update next week!

Almost There.

When the husband and I first talk to our mortgage broker, he told us that we would need pay stubs from one months worth of pay, and we were told that my husband started during the beginning of a new pay period. Well, he got paid two weeks later, but it was only for one weeks worth of work, basically meaning that they're one week ahead with pay (if that makes sense). So we initially thought he'd have one months pay on Sept 18, but in fact he only had three weeks of pay. Our mortgage broker decided to try to submit the loan paperwork anyway and see if the lender would notice. That was last Wednesday. I called up there today to see if he had heard anything and he said he was just waiting on one last piece of paperwork - the approval of the mortgage underwriter - aka the last step in the loan process. I talked to our realtor too, and he think we should be in the home by next week! We scheduled our final walkthrough for Monday, to make sure everything we requested to be fixed was done accordingly.

I am really excited! I think I am going to call the movers from the Army tomorrow to schedule our stuff to be delivered next Friday (can always be changed if need be). The only other thing in our way is the cost this may entail. When one gets out of the Army, they will only move your belongings as far as your 'home of record' or where you entered in the service at. NYC was 900 miles from where we lived in TN, however AZ is 1500 miles, so we may have to pay whatever their price is for 600 miles. We do know one girl who said she never had to pay for her extra mileage, but we're not sure if we'll be as lucky.

Anyway, that's the latest news. I can't wait to get into the house & decorate and just make it my own. I will post pictures soon!

Quick Update.

Last week after my husband had his phone interview, they told us we should know more in the following two weeks. I felt that meant his chances were pretty low and I knew it was going to be hard to wait that long to hear something. Lucky for us though, because they called three days later and offered the hubby a job! We were beyond ecstatic and totally relieved. He starts on August 24th and in the past week had a drug test and physical. The time is going slowly now, because we have so much to look forward too. I am excited for him to start his job, and probably even more excited to start house hunting. Also, my bff Kelsey is planning on visiting in October. We had plans on hold until the hubby for sure had a job, but now he does, so it's looking more likely that she'll make an appearance. Anyway, that's my small update for now, hope to write more later this week.