More curtains

Today I tackled the middle boy's curtains.  I was surprised by his fabric choice -- he usually likes blues.  I thought he'd go for one with stripes, or dots, or something more boyish.  Instead he chose this dark orange with white and black birds.  We walked around the entire fabric and curtain area at Ikea twice, and he insisted on this fabric.  I hope he likes it for a while!

I tried a different type of iron on hemming tape.  This stuff came in packs of 10 yards, the stuff I bought earlier was in 3 yard packs.  This stuff also had paper backing.  The instructions said to iron it on adhesive side down for 2 seconds, then remove the backing, attach the fabric, and iron for 8 more seconds.  This is how I expected the stuff I used yesterday to work, but that stuff just said to iron on one side, and there was no backing.  I prefer the stuff I used today.  I did have trouble removing the paper backing on a few sections.

Another thing I did differently today was in how I made the second curtain.  Yesterday, after making the first, I measured its length, and then tried to make the second the same length.  It didn't work well.  The second curtain ended up about 1/2 an inch shorter than the first.  Today, after making the first curtain, and doing the top hem on the second curtain, I placed the first on top of the second, to figure out where to place the bottom hem on the second curtain.

Both the cat and dog tried to help. 

The middle boy's bedroom window has an arch over the top.  I have no idea what you are supposed to buy to cover that, so I installed the rod just straight across the bottom of the beginning of the arch.  

I was very happy with how these turned out.  They were much quicker than the first set too!  Tomorrow I'll try to do the fat little rabbit's.  

In which I make curtains

So I decided to make some of the curtains today.  I went at got some iron on hem tape, rather than try to sew them by hand, or pay for a sewing machine.  The window started like this:

  So you can see why not having curtains or blinds was a problem. Windows that face out to the street?  They need curtains.






I set the fabric out, and started with the iron on tape.  We somehow failed to pack our ironing board when we moved, so I had to improvise with a towel on the floor.  It worked fine.

  

Our cat decided to help.  He was not very helpful.

The biggest problem came when I went to hang them up.  I bought curtain rods from IKEA, and when I went to hang the rods, I discovered that they did not come with the screws necessary to attach the holders to the wall. This seems wrong to me.  A quick stop at our local hardware store fixed that though, and I got them all hung!  I"m pretty happy with how they turned out!  I think I'll start on the others this weekend.

5 miles and new curtains (almost)

5 miles yesterday.  It was warm out, but really windy.  I ran mostly laps around the ponds at our local park, but it seemed I had a headwind no matter which direction I ran.  My pace showed it too - it was a struggle to stay under 12 minutes/mile.  6 miles next week!

We looked for curtains for the kids' rooms today.  I didn't really like any we saw, so I took the kids with me to IKEA to look there.  The two boys found fabric they really liked, and I found some cute stuff for the fat little rabbit's room.  The trick is, it was just fabric!  Now I have to figure out how to sew it into curtains.  I don't think it will be too difficult, just a couple of straight seems, right?

Oldest boy's choice:

Middle boy's choice:

Fat Little Rabbit's:

Moving Day (or days)

Every time we move, I swear the next time we move we are hiring movers to do the packing and heavy lifting.  Then the next time rolls around, and I get to feeling frugal (ha!) and decide we can do it all ourselves.  This is almost always a mistake.  Oh, the moving gets done, but not without a bunch of cursing, late nights, and usually some damage to the furniture.  And at the end, I swear we are never moving ourselves again.

So Thursday rolls around, and we close on the new house.  We head straight from closing to U-haul, and get started.  The first load goes ok.  We had to remove only the front panel from the crib, rather than take it completely apart.  Other furniture was more difficult, and we did manage to damage the awesome, and heavy, bed we bought we we moved here.  Moving things up the stairs at the new house was a pain.  But things were moving along.  We knew we'd have more help on Saturday, so we tried to prioritize.

Our last load of the night was supposed to be the washer, dryer, and fridge.  I rented an appliance dolly along with the U-haul, and thought it would be easy - after all, we had moved all of the appliances into the house without one!  The washer and dryer were fine, if heavier than I remembered.  The fridge, not so much.  On the last corner before the front door, my husband said to tilt it "this way" and apparently his idea of "this way" was my idea of "that way" and my fingers ended up smashed between the fridge and the wall.  Ouch.  The fridge did not get moved that night.

A quick trip to the ER made sure that nothing was broken.  A night of broken sleep made sure that the prospect of still having to move stuff was enough to make me want to cry.  My husband's coworkers came to the rescue with a suggestion of a moving company several had used with great success.  I was doubtful that they would have any availability (it being 2 days before Christmas), but they said they could come out at 8 a.m. Christmas Eve.

It was wonderful.  They moved the rest of the furniture, the fridge, bikes, lawn mower, basically all of the heavy stuff, and took it to the new house.  They then moved everything in, and moved all of the stuff we had moved only downstairs to the appropriate place upstairs.  They were even able to move the elliptical machine upstairs - a machine so heavy that I can't even move it a few inches by myself.  These guys are my heroes.  In less than 3 hours, they had moved stuff that would have taken us a whole day.  And I don't think I heard them swearing even once.

If we ever move again (no!), I'm hiring movers from the start.

Sick today, moving tomorrow!

I think I've slept 20 of the past 24 hours.  I was feeling poorly at work yesterday, and by the time it was time to go home, was alternately having chills and sweating.  I made my husband drive home.  Got home, went straight to bed.  I called in sick today, and spent most of the day in bed sleeping.

We close on our new house tomorrow at 10 am., and have a u-haul reservation at 12:30.  I hope I'm feeling well enough that we can actually get stuff moved.  Fortunately, our lease on our current house goes for a while, and the landlord isn't relisting it until January, so if we can't move tomorrow, it isn't the end of the world.  A few of my husband's friends said they can help on Saturday -- but I hope we are long moved in by then.

I was planning on attending a social run hosted by a local running store, but that is obviously not happening tonight.  Maybe next week.

House Hunting Ruminations

The first house my husband and I bought was a mistake.  We were moving from Texas to Boston, and after years of being poor undergrads, and then poor law students, we were finally making good money.  We were sick of renting, and wanted to buy.  The market had finally started going down, and we thought it would be a good time to buy low.  This was 2007. Oops.  We made a lot of mistakes buying that house, from not researching the schools, not knowing which parts of the neighborhood were best, and not understanding exactly how much repairs were going to cost. Three years later, when we decided to move back to Texas, we had a hard time selling.  We ended up selling for around $70,000 less than we bought, and that doesn't count the money we spent deleading the house, replacing the roof, the furnace, etc.

We rented in Texas while waiting for the house in Boston to sell.  When it finally did, we felt comfortable with the area where we were renting, and wanted to buy again.  For one, we could afford to spend more, and since the area we moved to has a much lower cost of living, the money we can spend goes a lot farther.  Instead of looking at 100 year old capes, with 1 bathroom, and tiny kitchens, we were looking at homes built in the last 30 years, with huge kitchens, multiple baths, plenty of space for the kids.  Most importantly to us, no lead paint!

As we toured the houses on our shortlist, having been so recently in the seller's position, I kept imagining myself back there.  It didn't help that many of the homes were still occupied, and at a few the owners were leaving as we were getting there.  I remembered when we first put our home on the market, being excited at the number of showings that were scheduled.  When someone scheduled a second showing, I allowed myself to hope that we'd have an offer soon.  Did these owners get their hopes up too?  I can't imagine the stress of keeping your house in showing condition -- we didn't put ours on the market until after we'd moved out.

We really liked one house - it was almost perfect.  But the one thing it was missing - a room we could use as a playroom for our three kids, was not something we were willing to compromise on.  I wanted to tell the owners how much I liked their house.  But I know they don't really care that I loved their yard, and the wood they choose for the flooring.  They want me to love it, yes, but they really want me to make an offer.

We asked our agent to pull the seller's disclosures for 2 houses, and ask what information was available about a third, a bank owned foreclosure.  A few days later, the bank dropped the price on the foreclosure - to below what we had been considering offering.  So we put in an offer.  While waiting to hear back, we looked at more houses.  One I loved.  Another both my husband and I liked an awful lot.  They both went under contract while we were waiting to hear back on our offer on the foreclosed house.

Our offer was accepted, and we scheduled an inspection.  Then we had to ask the bank to do some repairs.  While the bank was considering our repair request, we went to look at one more house.  Just to check.  Just to make sure we wanted to go through with the foreclosure.  I wanted to either love or hate the house.  Loving it would make our decision easy - we'd offer on it, and walk away from the more expensive, but bigger, foreclosed house.  If we hated it, we'd stick with the foreclosure.  We liked it.  A lot.  We didn't love it, but it was a very nice house, and would work very well for us.  And it was less expensive.  We went home to agonize.  We asked our agent to get the seller's disclosures.  We had her ask the seller's agent if there were any pending offers.  We decided we'd probably make an offer on it.  Our agent drew up a new offer.

And then we woke up the next morning and changed our minds.  We felt we were settling.  This is supposed to be our forever home, and we didn't want to settle.  There were more things we loved about the foreclosure.  And so we didn't make an offer on the other house.  And I felt awful for the owners.  Their house had been on the market for 6 months.  They'd done some major improvements to it.  I imagine their agent told them someone was very interested.  And then an offer never came.  I was there a few months ago. I remember waiting for an offer to come it, hoping that was the reason my phone was ringing.

We're closing on the foreclosure next week.  I've still got all of the other houses we looked at, and liked, saved on our agent's website.  I'm rooting for my favorites to sell soon.  I've been there.

Christmas Shopping Disappointment

We're buying a house.  It has a lot of potential, but right now is very beige. The walls? Beige. The carpet? Beige. For a little variety the countertops are off-white.  This must change.  We like color, and we don't much like carpeting.  Carpeting in the dining room, when we have three small kids, seems like a particularly bad idea.   The house is also huge.  Like three times bigger than our first home.  But helpfully, due to the move from Boston to Dallas, not three times as expensive!  As with most housing purchases, we will be bleeding money for the next little bit.  Especially to get rid of the beige.  Oh, and to get furniture.  And fix the myriad of tiny things the inspector mentioned we just might possibly want to fix, but aren't huge problems.  And so we are trying to have a less expensive Christmas. 

As our fat little rabbit will be only three months old, we figured we could get away with getting her mostly clothes as gifts -- she needs them anyway, and she really will not know the difference.  So cyber Monday rolls around, and I have a 35% off coupon for gap.com, along with free shipping.  We really like Gap's baby clothes, so I log on and start filling up my virtual shopping cart.  I also had coupons for gymboree.com and carters.com, so I looked there as well.  As I shopped at all three stores, my orders at Gymboree and Carter's would occasionally update, as items sold out.  My loss, as I was taking my sweet little time making up my mind what I wanted.  I finally had the three carts filled with what I wanted, and decided to go with the cart at gap.com.  I finished my order, and made a mental note to watch for the package.  That night, I showed my husband the order, and was particularly excited about a super cute lilac cardigan, with a matching onesie.  My husband humors my desire to dress our little girl in purple; he prefers the pinks.

Around 3 a.m. this morning, I was nursing the fat little rabbit, and playing on my iPad.  I checked my e-mail, and noted an e-mail from gap.com regarding my order.  "We're sorry, but while processing your order, we found that the item(s) below are no longer available. Your Order Total has been adjusted to reflect any changes."  it said.  The items?  The onesie and cardigan I was most excited about.  But wait a minute.  Gap is just now processing my order? A week after I placed it?  And it just now "found" that the items are no longer available?  Does Gap not have an inventory control system?  I have visions in my head of a huge warehouse, and frantic holiday hire employees walking around with order forms.  They walk to the spot on the shelf where the lilac cardigans are kept, and oh no! they are gone!  Surely that's not how it works.

The real kicker is in the adjustment to my order total.  I had a $20 rewards coupon I earned from previous purchases with my Banana Republic card.  The way Gap handles the coupon when you buy multiple items is to allocate the discount across all of the items.  So when gap.com credited my account for the two items it was unable to sell me, it credited back only the price minus the allocated portion of the rewards coupon.  But it wasn't my fault that Gap can't keep track of its inventory.  I didn't decide to return the items; Gap refuses to sell them to me.  In the end, I didn't get to use around $4.50 of my rewards coupon, because Gap made a mistake.

Gap does feel sorry though.  To make it up to me, they've offered a 10% discount code.  What?  The 35% off discount is no longer valid, and I've lost $4.50 from my rewards coupon, but I can have 10% off a future order?  Is that really supposed to make me feel better? Credit the $4.50 to the original order, so I can use the whole $20 rewards certificate, honor a 35% discount for two like items so I can replace the items you agreed to sell me but now cannot, and I'll feel as if I'm at least back in the same position I was last Monday.  At that point, throwing in a 10% oops-we-messed-up discount is a nice thing to do.  As it stands, I think your customer service is crappy.