Thursday, September 8, 2011

The Long Paseo Home

What a long ride home it has been. We hit a halt in the rode before our last closing and did not buy the yellow house with the big front porch. We backed out of the contract during our option period due to me just not being 100% comfortable with the neighborhood it sat in. It was pretty rough, a transitional neighborhood. I thought I could do it, but after spending many of days sitting on the front steps of that house I realized that I was about to take away a freedom from the kids that they have in our current area where they can actually walk to a friends house or ride their bikes down the street. Funny how things work, and how ultimately when we fell off our path we were supposed to be on...things just do not work until you get back on the right path. This is life. And so...we found a house, a tiny house with a small closet in each bedroom and no extra closets in the house other then where the washer and dryer live. It is a Ju-Nel Mid Century modern home. This just happens to be my husband and my favorite architect in the world...So, when one came on the market in our price range we jumped fast! We are in option now, inspection are tomorrow. I am totally in L.O.V.E. with the lines of this house, the double sided fireplace, the old vintage kitchen, the cool floors. Everything does happen for a reason, really. The owner added a detached 2 car garage in the back thankfully, so we can store the vacuum cleaner and essential items one would normally put in a closet. I am going to have to pair down my clothes, and shoes and just keep what I love. This is going to be fun. I am super pumped up about this house and am so excited to go on this journey. We should move into our Casa Not So Grande next month! Until then....I will be picking out the mid century modern vintage wallpaper for the kids room. It is going to be so fun to decorate this house. Luckily we just moved out of a mid century modern so we already have the furniture.

Cheers!

Friday, August 26, 2011

Good-Bye Casa, Hello Casa

I am getting really tired of thinking we are getting a house and loosing it. This one WE actually walked away from @ THE CLOSING TABLE! Yes, it was maybe one of the top worst days of my life. We loved this property. We couldn't wait for the land, the chickens, the garden. We were so close. Closing was August 24th. We found out days before that the seller, who remember is broke, has a 35K lien on the house from IRS! We were beginning to worry, panic may have been a better word. We thought the title company had worked teh kinks out, but it turns out the friendly seller advised us to walk or we would be stuck with the lien as he just had it removed from his personal credit NOT the house! They were willing to work it out and wait for the IRS to do their paperwork...and we can only imagine how much longer this may take, so we said enough....and terminated the contract with the seller.  I felt immediate relief. Sometimes you just know you made the choice and that everything happens for a reason. Later THAT day we decided to go see a few houses in East Dallas. It was that afternoon that we found our dream home and two days later have an executed contract.

This is not a Casa Not So Grande, it is actually a 2500sf, 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom home. It is a completely renovated 1910 Colonial/Craftsman yellow house with a beautiful front porch.  All it needs is a family, and a few trees, flowers and a little garden. I am so excited I could scream! We should be in it by mid to late September. The problem is we sold so much of our furniture thinking we were downsizing , so we will have some spacious empty rooms for awhile until we can save up for some furniture.

We fell off our projected plan a tad. We did however pay off all of our debt, both cars and started an emergency savings.  We also put away our annual money we will owe for our work taxes since we are self employed, and started our IRA mutual fund and maxed that out. So we are much better then where we were before June. We are maxed out on our mortgage at 55% down in cash and 45% owed.  We hope to pay the house off by 15 years allowing us to also save for retirement and college. The payment is low, much lower then anything we could rent! So we are in a good place, and have created a budget we will try hard to stick to! The hardest for me is always food. I am such a foodie and Whole Foods is minutes from our new house. We must learn to eat for less with out compromising organic, local, non processed food. We have been spending about $1000+ a month on food for our family of 5. My kids are all eating so much, and growing so fast. I tried to keep us at $700 a month this summer and have gone over every month. This is a big challenge for me. I just read a post on 100 days of Real Food blog and do not know HOW they ate on 125/week with a family of 4...although her kids look itty-bitty and their portions look so small. I would love to hear from you and how you do it? What do you spend on food each month on your family?

My birthday is in 3 days, and I will be 40! I do believe we are getting this house. Best gift EVER.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

The Long Espera

It has been a long wait. We have been busy with summer fun, but the wait had just about stayed its welcome when we got notice that our offer had been accepted by the bank! YES. We got the house! My husband doesn't want me getting overly excited about it because our lender still has to do his magic in less then 3 weeks. If he can get it all together then it looks like we will be closing on August 24th and the seller will then have 7 days to vacate the home. OMG! We hope to be in the house mid to late September. We have to re-sand and stain the hardwood floors, prime and paint the inside walls, clean the duct work and reconfigure where the washer and dryer lives. And those things cost $$$ so we are trying to be extra frugal right now hoping that is all that HAS to be done before we move in. The crazy thing is we only have seen the house one time for about 20 minutes and now it is ours. We have been doing a lot of research on owning chickens. I am meeting with a friend who has over 15 chickens after the kids go back to school and getting a chicken 101. We are tempted to buy an igloo from omlet (I love the CUBE). Yes they are so ugly, and plastic but did you see the trays that pull out so easily to clean it and you can just hose it off! No cracks in the wood for mites to live. I love it, but they are again $$$ so we must save! We are researching used sitting mowers for the yard(another $$$). SO we are working hard here, putting as much money as we can away right now, enjoying being DEBT FREE and looking forward to having a place soon to call home. I am weirdly not excited to see our "stuff" in storage and looking forward to going through each item before it enters our new space asking myself 3 questions:
Does it have a purpose?
Is it something we could live without?
Could someone else use it more then us?

I lay in bed at night in visioning my new pantry full of beautiful glass containers full of simple raw foods and basic staples. This is my one chance to organize it right from the start ( I LOVE doing this kind of thing! Totally in my element).

We opened our first Roth IRA last week. This is a big deal considering we should have done this 11 years ago and I am turning 40 at the end of this month. It feels great just knowing that we got that ball rolling. Oh how we will teach our children differently.


I just finished reading a fabulous book called Parenting by the Book by John Rosemond. What a great read....maybe the best parenting book I have read!

I will keep you posted. please pray for us that the house sale goes through. This has been a long wait. But the best things we must wait for. It teaches us patients and so much more. I am so grateful for my family and our health and am anxiously awaiting a home to start new memories in.

Be back soon!

Saturday, July 9, 2011

Texas Veranos

Texas summers are hot. really. really. HOT. Moving day was July 29th and it was 100 degrees. I packed up the entire house in a zillion boxes to prepare for moving day when the 2 professional movers were to simply load it into their truck in what they thought would take easily 2-4 hours. (Clearing my throat now), Umm... not quite. It took a total of 14 hours and yes they were charging by the hour and yes I was helping load boxes with them. The worst part of it was that they FORGOT to load our entire attic onto their truck, so on closing day my husband and I not only had to lug it down to storage but rent an entirely new unit because it wouldn't fit in the other. Boy am I glad that part is behind us. 

There is something freeing about all of our belongings piled away somewhere we can not touch or see them.  It really makes you think about what is really important to you. I do believe there will be a lot more tossing the next go around before we move in to our next house.

Our next house....Still waiting to hear from the bank about the short sale that we have a contract on. They have until August 24th to tell us whether the house is ours. We are trying not to think about it and just enjoy not owning a house and being 100% debt free. We just got back from a wonderful trip away at a friends Lake House about 4 hours away with NO internet or phone service. I felt like I went through withdraws not being able to check FaceBook for the first day or so, but after that realized just how much a hate it. Totally addicted to social media via my iPhone. And H.A.T.E that I am. It is like a bad, bad drug. I must work on separating myself more from my phone.

I am pushing 40 in late August. Hopefully the bank will give us wonderful news early, and we will be all moved in before my birthday...best present ever! I am always trying to grow as a person, as a wife, as a Mom, spiritually... and I do believe this is a big year of growth for me. I am really excited about where I am in my life right now and am weirdly looking forward to my 40's. It wasn't until recently that I have really opened my heart to The Lord and asked him to help guide me and show me what it is I am supposed to be doing here. I have had constant tugging thoughts about adopting a child from Ethiopia. But my husband is not at all on the same page. I respect that, and know that if I listen carefully I will find exactly what I should be doing to better the world. Whether it is mission work with the family, or fundraising for needy children in 3rd world countries...I do know that I want to help save children, I am just not sure exactly how yet. I have such a heart for children.

My big kids go to sleep-away-camp tomorrow for the first time. We will be driving them there in the morning and plan to spend the rest of the week with our youngest daughter who just turned 5 last week at The Lake.

I will fill you in when we hear about the house! In the meantime, we are paying off  FULL credit card balances and cars, and medical bills as they come in the mail and are enjoying our stay with my husbands Mom who has graciously opened her home to our big family.

Friday, June 24, 2011

Tired Mama

I am such a tired Mama. I almost didn't write tonight because I feel like I am just going to be complaining. So, real quick I will just tell you that this whole moving thing really sucks and I am getting way too old for it. So, I will say in a very loving tone to my dear sweet realtor husband that this is it. This is the last move for a long time. I just don't have the energy that I had the first three houses we flipped together. We are a great team, there is no doubt about that. We can make something really undesirable and ugly-beautiful, and we have had fun....but, My Love, This is the last. I will give it another 100% but I am telling you: I am tired. The next time if there is one, we will hire movers who will pack up our house and unpack for us and I will just sit and watch. Ahhhhh... okay, so I vented. Now on to the good stuff! We had our last garage sale today and sold most of our furniture we know we won't need. We added all proceeds to the "sectional fund" we will be purchasing when we find a house. We are closer. We put an offer on a house a few days ago. A "short sale" in a fabulous neighborhood on a little over a half acre! Yes, it is a huge, huge lot and ideal for raising kids. Our dogs would be in heaven, and I could have my chicken coop I have always dreamed of! Fresh eggs....totally dreamy! Anyway, please pray for us. This house is a mess on so many levels. 11 agents walked it the day we did. Walking it was a production in itself. The man who owns the home is an odd one. He has 11 dogs, and they live in the house with him. Just him, and he was a bit strange to put it nicely. In order to walk it we had to have his agent call him to warn him "We were approaching the property" so he could move the 11 dogs around so it was safe for us to go from room to room. The house had an overwhelming smell of vinegar. It was really hard to be in the house. It is just a smell, and I know re finishing the wood floors, and primer and paint would take care of it... but that wasn't all. He was the hoarding type. Things were randomly propped in front of closets and doors and windows and really not a lot of room to see around things and get a great feel for the rooms...but we could tell it had good bones, it just needed our love! Yes, we might be slightly crazy that we put a bid in, not expecting to get picked out of all the offers that we competed with. We met this man, and he chose us. He wanted our family to live in the house. We found out late today that the contract will go to the bank with our escrow money and we have to wait now "90 days" for bank approval since this house we are buying is a short sale. If the bank turns down our offer then we are back to square one again. If they accept our offer we will be sitting on a pretty lot in a great area with a 1800 sf home that needs a lot of love and care throughout the years. This is a great investment. The neighbor homes are selling for 200-500K more then this house we are buying(and in Texas that is a lot)! It is a great investment!

Moving day is in 4 days!

Monday, June 20, 2011

GoodBye Casa

Another house gone. We are terminating our contract today on the house with the pool we were moving forward with. My husband was concerned that the temperature of the pool seemed to be worse or as bad as our Texas heat outside, warm bath water is what he said it felt like(yuk). Not going to cool us off at all...so was not worth a house with a pool in full sun. So, back to square one. We will focus on packing up again and moving into storage on June 29th. Staying with my mother in law until we find JUST the right house for us is exactly what we plan to do. Just right needs to fit our criteria of:

A one Story House
Small, easy to take care of
3-4 bedrooms, most likely 3
Pool a plus, or a large yard where we could build one in the future (with CASH)
Must not exceed our 60K mortgage max as we are paying most of house with CASH and will pay off house ASAP!
Big usable yard for kids and dogs
CLOSET space, praying for 2 closets in a master bedroom

On to packing!

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Necesito Yoga

I need yoga today more then any other day ever. Oh, I wish I had time to go! Pack, pack, and pack. I dropped two of our three kids off at Grandmas today so that my middle daughter could help me pack. I am cooking lunch and she is in her room watching TV. Hmmm? Hopefully gears will change after I re-charge.  Well, somehow our closing keeps moving up. Now we close ON moving day the 29th of June! Anxiety is high, I am still having trouble packing up. SLOWLY our house is going into boxes, very VERY slowly. My husband is working harder then ever this week. Did I mention he is a Realtor? He has 6 closings this month including our two. Yes, you read that right! We put an offer on the reduced house with the pool. Inspections will start tomorrow. If all goes well we will close on that house mid June which puts us at Grandmas house for ONLY 17 days (wow-so cool).  The house is a great deal smaller then what we are moving out of, but not as small as planned so we are feeling pretty giddy about having a one story 1959 sf home with 3 living areas! We still need to massively de-clutter and plan to have one more garage sale this next Friday! The house is not our style completely but it is move in ready with a few late nights of fresh paint on the walls. We will then make a priority list with all the hopes and dreams for the house and SAVE UP for them a little every month with our main focus being on creating a 6 MONTH'S of living emergency fund. When we meet that number we will begin knocking out a few weekend projects here and there. We are using all the garage sale money for a new sectional that we plan to spend a lot of time on in the main living area. This will help motivate me to get more stuff out in the yard next week! Well...we fell off of our plan of waiting to close before we submitted an offer....but we feel like we are making the right decision. The main thing is: WE will have both cars paid off in a few weeks, all medical and credit card debt paid off, we will have 2 months of our 6 months living emergency savings started, and we will be saving a ton of money each month on bills! So we are feeling pretty good right now. We are saying prayers that all inspections go well next week, and that this house will work our for our family.

Friday, June 17, 2011

Paralyzed Envasador

I am officially The Paralyzed Packer. I go to touch a box and look around and can't pack. I am getting distracted by the three kids being home wanting to go to The Soda Gallery (a promised outing for being good yesterday when the girls got their haircuts). I have packed one little box of books off the bookshelf today(omg). I am hoping we can put the Soda Gallery off till tomorrow, and just maybe... today can be productive? The buyers want to close on this house a day early(scream). We do in fact have our eye on a little house with a pool very close by. They just reduced the house 10K, and now it is looking very appealing. We will just wait. and watch. and see. and if it is still there on the 30th after funds hit the bank on this house we will most likely make an offer.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Cranky Mama

I confess, I am not a whole lot of fun to be around at the moment. 14 days to pack up the entire house and nobody is helping me pack! I caved and hired a two men movers and a truck to load up our boxes and bring to storage though. I shopped around and found a great deal for $450.00.  I turn 40 in August and my muscles aren't working as good as they were 10 years ago and I am married to a busy man who I love more then anything in the world, but I'm sorry to say I can not rely on for "being punctual".  So on June 29th, 2011 I know that all of our belongs will go to a storage unit down the road and this... makes me happy knowing there is an end to this part of our journey.

On to packing!

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Adios Debt

Part of deciding to sell our house was so that we could be closer to being 100% debt free.  Debt free meaning: ZERO car payments, ZERO credit card balances, ZERO medical bills, ZERO mortgage. Please understand that this was an extremely difficult decision to make when we have a family of five + two huge 100 lb dogs, and we are all very comfortable in our lifestyle. We live in a tri-level house with 4 spacious bedrooms, three bathrooms and 4 living spaces. Change seems scary. I will say that three weeks in to Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University classes, we knew that we were making the right choice. It still is hard...to let go of  the "Mom control", the not knowing where we will be next, the having everything in it's place and in a few weeks it will be in storage, the comfort of knowing we have a home that we won't have soon. We will be moving out on the 30th of this month and closing on July 1st. As soon as funds clear the bank we will be paying off all debt with our large amount of equity and we will officially be DEBT FREE. We will begin our home search again on July 1st. We have stopped looking realizing we have much more negotiating leverage being cash buyers + we don't want to get emotionally attached to another house and make impulsive decisions. So, we just wait now. And begin packing soon. Time will tell if we find a house we can pay for in all cash or if we will have a small mortgage? We do not want to go over 60K(but that would be our only debt). We can chip away at that pretty fast, but the lower the mortgage the closer we will be to financial freedom and we will begin saving for the 3 kids to go to college, for us to retire and budget for a few special vacations a year. This is also about simplifying as I mentioned in my first post and simply disregarding all the unnecessary fluff in life that has no importance or meaning in shaping our kids character. A home is shelter, a happy place where memories are made and our belongings are kept. Does it have to be big? The happiest times of my life were after we started our family and lived in a small space. There is something about small spaces that challenge us to live smart and live with less. We are weirdly excited about this adventure and finding Casa Not So Grande soon. This journey will be difficult for us to all let go of things and our attachment to material objects...but I know once we do, we will feel more free. This is a process and I am sure it will be emotional. Thanks for walking with us on our journey.

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Garaje Sale

What a long HOT Texas day it was to have a Garage sale.  I am exhausted. Kudos to the two older kids (ten and eight) for pulling their weight and taking charge. They both earned their pay today!  And it was fun to find out that we actually have two pretty savvy negotiators with great sales skills. I left it all up to the kids, we let them price things, they handled all the money, did all the work... AND we made $450. Hard work pays off. It was a teachable moment. I loved that our son decided to GIVE his ridiculously massive Pokemon collection that he has just outgrown to our friends younger boys down the street. His sweet heart is always working. He is walking the walk, and I could not be more proud to be his Mom.

We looked at a house today.
We move out of ours if all goes as planned on June 30th.
Closing on July 1st.

We are trying to stay focused and keep on track of exactly why we set out to go on this adventure in the first place. The house we saw today had a lot of really great qualities; a pool(!), a backyard where we could put a trampoline, a perfect spot for a skateboarding ramp, a basketball court, and I could even get chickens(!). The actual house fits our criteria for a one story and is teeny-tiny, which is what we are looking for. It could be (?) our Casa Not So Grande @ 1506 sf.

This journey for us is about simplifying our lives and finding peace in the memories, moments and cherishing the time we have left with our kids while they are young. Time will tell, but we do feel one step closer to finding Casa Not So Grande. 

Friday, June 3, 2011

El Plan Collapsed

We lost the house.
Gone.
Another buyer came in at full price with no contingency.

My immediate reaction was complete sadness. It really took me back, and after talking it through with my husband I realized that my sadness was more out of "our plan" collapsing. Why is it as Moms we feel such a need for control. This is all part of our adventure, part of growth, part of me trusting God that He has a plan and that we need to just sit back and have faith.

A few things that came out of this that will help us with our next home purchase:
1. We know we can live in 1488 sf with a huge lot
2. We want a huge lot, and hope to find one
3. A pool is a plus but not a necessity
4. We are trying to finance $0-60K on our next purchase
5. We may have to sit back and wait for the right house and live with my husbands Mom for a bit
6. I love one story homes

I am totally okay!
Maybe relieved because I knew my husband had a restful night sleep last night.... maybe this is good that the house is gone. There will be another one. This IS just the beginning of our adventure to find the perfect Casa Not So Grande.

Mariposas

Today our ten year old son participated in a crossing over to middle school ceremony where they released butterflies. Butterflies symbolize change. In some cultures the butterfly is considered to bring luck.  For Christians, it is considered a soulful symbol representing rebirth and a new beginning. Watching all the butterflies flying up above our heads I thought about our family and the transformations we are going through right now. I am saying prayers that our house sale closes as planned July 1st and that we will begin our relationship with Casa Not So Grande which I can not wait to tell you more about as soon as we know we can call it home!

Here is my To-Do List for today: Garage Sale tomorrow @ 7am

Go through all 3 kids closets for garage sale items outgrown
Go through Game Closet, donate 3/4 of toys/games to garage sale
Go through bathroom closets for old towels, blankets, products that never gets used
Go through kitchen for any kitchen things we never use for garage sale
Clean out my massive walk in closet and donate 3/4 of clothing to garage sale
Make sure my husband does the same with his closet
Go through and box up my art studio stuff for garage sale saving one small box of tools
Begin tagging a few big items for garage sale
Try to organize it all the best I can, or not

Besides the fact that my husband is working all day tomorrow and I am flying solo with our garage sale, I am really looking forward to waking up Sunday morning and having this behind us. I have no expectations about how much we will sell, but I do know that whatever $ we make will be going towards some minor changes that must be made over at Casa Not So Grande before we can move in. We plan to have one more huge sale before we move out because we will be downsizing to a teeny-tiny 1488 sf.  The important thing to know is that Casa Not So Grande sits on over a half an acre... and that is what makes it SO desirable to us. Do you think we are crazy yet?

Thursday, June 2, 2011

La Project

Life got too messy. There was too much to clean, too much to keep up with, too much to pay off, too much to organize, and so here we are : Simplifying life, stripping toxins and starting a new beginning. It's funny how...when you don't know what it is like to have it all, you think the answers are all in that. But then when you do have it all; the nice cars, the big house, the stuff to fit in every nook and cranny of the house: the plastic toys, the gadgets, Apple TV, X-Box, playstation(s), wii(s), iPad(s), Mac(s), camera(s), tivo, premium cable, wireless this, wireless that, His and Her walk-in closets, jetted bathtubs, an insta-hot. Really? Is it that hard to boil water? Sadly I can go on and on and on, and it just makes me want to puke thinking about all of this crap and why we justify we need it to survive. The worst part is... that our kids expect it all and want more and more and more and more and have become spoiled, and ungrateful and greedy. Gag-me please! We are fed up with being caught up; "hamsters on a wheel" as my husband says, and have decided to make a big change. This is the beginning of La Project and how Casa Not So Grande was born. I won't go in to details on how much our car payments are, or how much debt we have. But I will tell you in 30 days we will be free.  We are about to begin a new chapter in life which will allow for more time creating memories with our children and less time buying "stuff" . We are creating a new meaning of family values that most people might perceive as crazy. Maybe we are crazy? Maybe we're smart? You decide. You are welcome to join us on our journey by following this project.