when we were stumped with what to do with the space left of the tv (had computer, video game stuff and movies in a pile), wil had the grand idea of buying a second bookcase and completing the wall as a whole entertainment unit. it could not have worked out better, and i am surprised we didn’t think to fill up this wall like this in the beginning. and oddly enough, it makes the room feel bigger.

i was excited to go back to ikea for a third time in one month (yay for craigslist income!) and we were in and out so efficiently…unlike any ikea run i’ve been on. and with wil getting everything set up and reconnected in less than an hour, we got our ‘life’ on track. our tv, computer, printer, important files, my camera stuff, and our million books (with space for wil’s 19 more from school!).

well, i say life on track, but that’s not talking about our whole lives…do i have a job yet? no, don’t ask.

took a few shots around the place…our home for the next year at least. click on the picture to go to my flickr, and i put little notes on all the pictures.

from their initial offer, we countered with bumping up the price, and also bumping up the closing date. while the price was not an issue, they also asked if we could throw in an old window we had hanging in the den, and while i love that window- i just know how much of a hassle it would be trying to move back with it without it breaking… the closing date was written as august 20th (their preference), but when it comes closer to it, we might shift it a couple days here or there. luckily, as formal as house purchases are, it seems like there’s a bit of casualness. we got their return offer and knew we’d accept it on friday afternoon, but being in brevard visiting wil (another post to follow later), we were out of contact to sign and fax until yesterday.

i am just so relieved and thankful for god providing a buyer, but i am yet again, in awe of his plan. not only is all of this timing absolutely perfect with ‘our’ schedule, just a couple days prior we considered lowering our price so that the listing could be seen as new an resent to all the agents, in hopes for renewed activity. we agreed to doing it on monday or tuesday, but something distracted her from doing it right away, and lo and behold, our buyers came in and made the offer!

thanks for all the continued prayers…while we still have the inspection hurdle to get over (next tuesday), we feel like we actually are moving now. one less unknown off our list, and we can move forward with getting the next steps in place!

open house today. had three different groups of people come through. we still worked the same amount and were out of the house for the same amount of time for a regular single showing, so i would have only been disappointed if no one showed up.

hey, that’s 3 more potential buyers. our realtor was still there when we returned, and got the lowdown, and said it was all positive…one of the couples loved loved loved the house, and had already placed an offer on a short sale house with the bank, which means they could still have 3 months to wait, and maybe liked the option of this house as a plan b if they decided to withdraw.

but no offer is still no offer. we are patient.

prior to us putting the house on the market, i knew in my head that i’d be stoked if we were even able to sell it by the end of the summer. but since we’ve had so much interest right off the bat, the positivity has actually caused anxiety over not getting an offer yet.  ugh!

and this time is all going way too fast.

wil leaves in like a week and a half and i just can’t handle that realization. him being gone, and how much stuff we potentially have to do and pack before he leaves.

it hurts my head thinking about it.

but we’ll probably have another open house next weekend, or the next. there are just too many variables to why people do and don’t come to open houses, so it makes sense to all of us to just keep getting it out there and available to show. maybe people are on vacation that weekend, maybe the weather is too cold, maybe the weather is too hot, maybe people ran out of time seeing other open houses. you just never know.

but it gives us time to just keep packing, keep tinkering with the age and look of the screened porch (what we feel like is the only thing that could distract people from all the positives), and keep keeping the house clean.

i love having an always clean house! love it.

and the dogs love getting to go in the car so much. i think ava officially thinks that she gets to go everywhere with us now, but we have happy worn out dogs whenever we return. and they keep somehow getting treats from us because wil and i feel bad for disrupting their routine so much.

being in the car is treat enough though right? i’d say yes based on their faces.

if only they know they have 4-5 days straight of this in the next few months…

i at least took an hour off work (hey, i’m leaving, i should start using my vacation hours!), and when i got home wil and jason were deep into screened porch demo/fixing…long story short, we planned that if we got enough comments on the longevity of the screened porch during house showings, we would do something to freshen it up and visually reinforce it…

with a showing today, we started the usual “put the house back together” routine right after i got home *with the phone on my side…

we worked till 6:30, without dinner in our bellies and headed to a coffee shop for a small scale show we had already committed ourselves to (before we realized it was on our anniversary).

three music sets and a crappy cappuccino later, we were starved, and where did we go to celebrate our 3 years of wedded bliss? taco bell….drive through…

rather than the usual traditional yearly gifts of paper, cotton, leather…we decided that our gifts consisted of plywood, fiberglass and bean burritos.

ah, young love.

*but the best gift of all, that we did not give each other, was the quick birth of eleanor elaine dunn, at 5:40 (nashville time)!!! her birthday will always be close to our hearts.

we are ready to put it on the market…a few minor things to fix…a broken screen door, touch up paint on a couple ceilings, but nothing that can’t be hidden in pictures or finished by a first showing (i plan on accomplishing some of those things after i post this…). i emailed our realtor and asked if she needed to take pictures or if i just could, but the day is sooo pretty i just took them anyways.

i feel like i’ve been to and done enough interior photo shoots at work to compose an image highlighting what needs to be highlighted. i don’t mean to toot my own horn or anything…it was just a fun excuse to take pictures of our house and tweak and move things here and there to get the full effect. only i know what junk is hiding behind certain chairs or shelves for the temporary shot!! (quiz: if any of you can guess which shot ava is in…i’ll give you a…congratulatory high five!)

the only one i didn’t take was of the front of the house…well, i took one, to use as a guide of what i need to fix up and weed, etc. ava wanted to be a part of that too, since we were on her bathroom break (gracie was sleeping who knows where).

taking the dogs outside to go the bathroom with new seed in the back is paying off!

i probably will cut in a little closer to not see the gutter and cars and less of the garage (and move to the left to get less of the tree in the way) for the real picture, but ava was keeping watch (she was tied to the tree), so i zoomed out to see her. she looks little!

mom & sue are in town and it’s been an episode of designed to sell all weekend. garage sales, rearranging furniture, new carpet, craigslisting, the works. lots of progress and no time to sit and post stuff. also had a temporary summer opportunity arise that we are bouncing around in our heads this week. and last night we did sit down and make some headway on a couple of wil’s applications. phew!

stay tuned…!

unfortunately this morning is the morning that the city has decided to trim the trees in our neighborhood that are near power lines.

with that said, ava has gotten into a barking tizzy every ten minutes or so with all the action…probably since about 8:30ish…the big orange road work sign seems to be getting her worked up the most.

i’ll be very suprised if wil has actually been asleep for the last hour.

sorry hun…

i bet it could go wrong if the installer went staple or glue happy, but ours was pretty straight forward and pretty dang easy. wil ripped up a square, threw it out the window, and i marched it to our trash can…

we wanted to save a buck on our future carpet install, so we’re doing the rip up ourselves, and doing one room at a time. the office went first since it was pretty gross. there’s no before picture because i’d be too embarrassed.

but look how simplified our setup has become! it’s kind of fun.

*side note: ava’s tail is in constant motion, as captured in the photo…wil and i decided it’s like her sonar…she just wags it whether or not she is happy so that she can know what’s around her at all times, whether or not she can see you. and it’s really loud when it hits something hard, or the side of the bed, so it kind of works two ways because then we can always hear where she is.