Dress Up, Dine In

We've got an accepted offer in on the Trolley house! On deck: meth test, general and FHA inspections, and hopefully closing if all looks good! While we wait, we've been looking at old photos of SLC. This is the Trolley house although the date it was taken escapes us.

Four years ago today, Seth and I stormed the adopt-a-thon at the Oaks Mall to find a skinny Shih Tzu mix that had been picked up in a puppy mill raid. I had no idea about the extent of his health issues or how much we'd have to work to get him out of his old life mindset. I just knew that he curled up in my lap when we were signing the adoption papers and we were in love. Tezzie's petfinder picture in 2006 Today is his "9th birthday!" after a long day of partying, 2010 When I think about all the life changes he's been through with me, it's a little overwhelming. Probably the biggest was when we moved to Kissimmee. We ate lots of dinners together on the floor in front of the TV. He kept me company while I met new people, started new jobs and tried to keep my lights on during the summer with a minimum wage paycheck. He was also the perfect trav...

[Update: The Nevada house got turned over to Freddie Mac/Home Steps. An already crazy situation just got extra ridiculous. The Zen & Cookies house is in a bidding war at full price.] We think we found our house! It's a 1905 "mini Victorian" that's downtown, central to 9 th and 9 th , Trolley Square and Liberty Park. We call it the Trolley house because we're pretty sure the extra wide street it's off of is where they ran the old school trolleys . It's got 3 bedrooms and 1.5 baths. At 1241 sq ft, it's smaller than most places we've looked at but it's more than enough to get us through those early family years. We especially like that its list price is really close to what we pay in rent a year. It's also mostly turn key and ready to go! Seth is going to be in St. George for the next 2 days and when he gets back we're going to go look at it again (cue the big purchase nervousness). If we still feel good about it we're...

Since everything looks better in sunlight (especially after Friday's freak snow), we decided to go open-housing (yes, to us it's a verb) on the first day of Spring. We saw 4 houses but 2 stood out. One was within walking dista n ce to Liberty Park and had the most perfect interior styling and deck but the basement wasn't usable space and it couldn't ever be bigger than a 2-1. The second was this house: It's a 1923 bungalow pretty close to the dog park but that's not even the best part. When we walked in it was like falling in love. The owner had just finished baking chocolate chip cookies and was getting ready to leave. There was feng shui music playing and the energy in that house was so excellent. We're calling it the "Zen and Cookies" house. The only bad part is the price point. It's definitely more than we can swing on our one-salary-budget (we don't want to be house poor even if we do both have salaries). However, she's...

First off, Happy St. Patty's Day my friends! I am indeed drinking after the kind of week we've had in the house hunting department. We've now seen over 18 houses. Monday was a trip downtown to the Avenues. If I were an SLC address I would be in the Avenues. It's eclectic, hip and full of puff people. It's also typically way out of our price range. So we were pretty amped to look at 2 houses that were. This was the nicer of the 2: We'll call it the "Graveyard Avenues" house from here on out. It was built in 1906 and like most houses in the area is going to need some work. Some of the work is cosmetic and other types are major like securing the foundation. These houses are just so old and are on hills that they need to be updated. BUT, a block away there are massively nice mansions. It's also a "regular sale" house which is fast becoming a really attractive quality when house hunting. After the Avenues, we went up over by the "Ne...

This is the second year that I've given up shopping for Lent. I don't know what that says about me as a person, that the biggest sacrifice I can make is keeping my wallet closed except for necessary (aka boring) things, but whatever. Of course, the minute I give it up I find completely wonderful things like these Pomellato charms from their Dodo line. They're Italian ( oolala ) and they're for a good cause. A portion of the sales go to the World Wildlife Fund of Italy. Some day you will be mine, little penguin...but not until after Easter. In necessary spending news....the foreclosure date was pushed back two weeks on our "Church/Nevada House." Still no word on whether they accepted our offer. Of course!

Last Wednesday after waiting 5 weeks for a response on our "Nevada House" offer (see 1st house hunting story), we got one on the way downtown to the Cursive show. The seller's agent had never submitted our offer to the bank out of a weird attachment to the couple we're in competition with and now...with the house on the verge of foreclosure...everyone was putting in their highest and best offer. If I get any further into it I'll explode again. So, I'll just tell yo u that we put in a strong offer and if the Universe sees it fit for us to hav e this house, it will all work out. There's some ridiculous karma coming towards that seller's agent though. The foreclosure date is tomorrow so please throw some good vibes our way. So, what do we do while we wait (some more)? We go to shows of course. We relive our college years with Cursive at In the Venue. We catch up with old friends in Mayday Parade at Saltair. Live music is my fountain of youth. "we...