The Tale of the Happiest Birthday

People, I had the best birthday I've had in years! I don't know why, but historically, my birthday has usually been a bad day. Not the sort of I-can't-believe-I'm-so-oooolllllldddd sort of bad day. Just the kind of day where you have to work and it's raining and you get in a fight with your mom and the bank account is empty and it's hot dogs again for dinner and you get stuck in traffic and you get bleach on your favorite shirt...you get the idea. Oddly enough, the day after is usually much better. But this year my birthday was on a Saturday and the whole weekend was awesome!

Friday Nick was off, and we had dinner with my brother and his wife and son in their new house, so I didn't have to cook and the meal was awesome! This was our first visit to their house since they moved in, and it was really neat to see them settled after a long struggle to find the right home. Before we stopped there we swung by my parents' house to drop something off, and my mom gave me my gift - a gift certificate for a massage! I've never had a professional massage, and I can't wait to use it!

Even though Nick had to work on my actual birthday, he got to come home early which never happens. But before he came home he called me with some good news about the house situation. Then when he got home he took us out to dinner and then dropped me off at Tuesday Morning and Joann and Michael's while he watched the kids. I found some great stuff at Tuesday Morning, including a couple of Christmas gifts that I saw last time and was afraid would get gone before I could get back and buy them. I had a gift card at Joann from Nick, so I got to go crazy in there. I came out with some AWESOME clearance stuff and still only spent half the gift card! Then at Michael's I had three coupons which allowed me to knock two things off my longtime Amazon wish list as well as buy a jewelry tool I didn't even realize how bad I needed until I found out it existed (hello, one step ear wire maker!). And I had a couple gift cards there from my awesome in laws that brought my out of pocket total to under $1! Then I got to go home and hop on Joann.com and use the rest of my Joann gift card on some more cool stuff, including the We R Memory Keepers Banner Punch Board, which I can't wait to get! I'm a total sucker for craft tools.

The next morning I got to go to church, and my mother and father in law handed me a card with some birthday money. The message was great, and after the service we went to lunch with my brother and his wife, after which they gave me my birthday gift from them, which was an Amazon gift card (yay!!). I'm still debating what I'm going to buy with it, but I'm thinking a Pick Punch (not an affiliate link).

But here is one of the coolest things that happened. There was recently a store opened near our house called Bargain Hunt. Now I had never heard of them before they opened a location here, but they're a pretty awesome store. They get random merchandise from other stores and mark it down to a great price. If it hasn't sold after a month, they mark it down 10% every day until it's 90% off their price. Sort of like Big Lots and an Easter egg hunt had a baby. My mom has found Lily a few dresses there that retailed originally for around $50.00 each and paid $1.49 for them. So anyway, Friday I was looked for a gift for someone there, and I walked down the craft aisle, and out of the corner of my eye I spied, way back under a shelf...a Minc Machine! The big one!

The box was a little battered, but it was still sealed up, and I almost hurt myself getting it in my buggy so fast. I looked at the price, and it was $61! That's 60% off retail! I've wanted one since they came out, but I just couldn't spend $150 on one when we're trying to buy a new house. Now granted, you can find them for around $100 now, but I've never seen one priced that low. I'm so excited! I try not to buy anything that's technically unnecessary that costs very much without asking Nick first, just out of respect for him as my husband and also the guy who works so I can stay home with the kids. So I actually saved the receipt just in case he wanted me to take it back, but then I got birthday money, which mostly paid for it anyway. Not that he was likely to tell me to return it in the face of the starry look in my eyes, haha!

I actually already had some accessories for it that I had gotten on clearance at Joann months ago, some foil and tags and scrapbook/journal embellishments. I had grabbed them because I wanted to try foiling with my laminator, and it worked okay, but I saved most of them in case I ever did get a Minc. And I'm glad I did, because it does a much better job with foiling than just a plain laminator because of all the different temperature settings. Not that I don't love my laminator. I might have laminated the first three papers Lily brought home from kindergarten. #thatleeeeetlebitcrazymom When I get my craft room I'm going to go nuts with the foiled prints for my walls. I've already got a strong start on a Minc themed Pinterest board. And I have big plans for the kids' rooms too!

In the meantime, I wanted to try it on something run on a copier, so I may or may not have foiled the church bulletin from last month that was hanging out in my car. Fancy!

Anyway, that's the amazing tale of how Tracy turned 38 in crafty/shopping mostly for free/no cooking/awesome family/really blessed style! I want to do this every year!

Poking my head up...

I've been trying to post for like a week now, but I'm sick, and it just seems like by the time I finish all the necessary tasks like feeding the kids and putting on pants, I have nothing left in me. It's nothing terribly serious, just a sore throat, but I'm on antibiotics now, so hopefully it's on its way out.

So here's what's happening. We have a contract on the house. Yay us! Actually, we had a contract before this one, but the buyer backed out because the inspection turned up some foundation damage. Boo! BUT, we are getting it fixed in 10 days, with a lifetime transferable warranty, so it shouldn't be an issue. Even with that, the first buyer didn't want to stay on board. Fortunately, he'd been in a bit of a bidding war with another buyer, and they were happy to take his place with the assurance that the foundation work is being done.

So now the race is on to find our next house. We found one that we really liked, but it sold the day before the contract went on ours. And we've since found one that we really love, but there are some issues with it that would have to be resolved for it to be an actual option for us. It's all very much up in the air from our viewpoint, but God has definitely been moving and providing, so we will see what happens.

So as far as crafting goes, there's been a little bit. Not much, but a little. And I don't have any tutorials for you right now, but here are a few things I've made.

Back in July a little girl at our church had a birthday, and I made her this fun candy colored paracord bracelet and earrings set. The bracelet actually ended up being a little small for her, so I made her a bigger one and she sent this one back to Lily.

My friend Melissa just had her gorgeous baby girl MacKenzie. Her nursery is done in gray and yellow with accents of teal in an elephant motif. So back in August for her baby shower I made her a few gifts. First was this paper banner with bows made using my Sizzix Bow Die.

I found this yellow and gray photo box at Hobby Lobby to put it in for gifting, and she can use the box in baby girl's room.

I made her a couple of curved burp cloths out of white terry cloth and this super soft cuddle minky.

And I also made her a faux chenille blanket. I'll be honest, I wasn't entirely happy with how the blanket turned out. The blue looked more teal in the store, and I should have used it as the one of the chenille layers and not the base fabric on the back. I should have sewn the lines half as far apart so the chenille strips would have been more even and stuck out less from the blanket. But it's still super cuddly, and she said she loves it.

My mother-in-law Brenda's birthday was also in August, and I made her this card.

It's very simple, but I like it. I'd really like to get into making cards on a more regular basis. I've got stamps, stamp pads, and embossing folders for days, but not much of a place to do it right now. And most of my stamps and ink pads are in storage right now anyway. When I get a craft room one of these days I plan on making up a bunch of different elements and having my girlfriends/sisters in law over for a card making party.

I also made Brenda this pretty patchwork zipper pouch.

The mint fabric was a duck cloth remnant from Hobby Lobby I think, and the coral polka dot fabric was from a pair of pants in the giveaway pile. I made my Mom a very similar one for her birthday in July.

Inside the pouch for Brenda I included this simple bead and chain set I made with these awesome metal filigree beads I got on clearance at Hobby Lobby.

We also had another Walridge Baptist Church Ladies Craft Meeting last month, but that one deserves a post of its own.

We could really use your prayers that God will show us to the house He has for us and that everything will go smoothly with the sale/closing on our own house. It looks like the timing may end up pretty tight on it - for us to close on the new home the same day as we close on the old home we will have to find the right house and have an offer accepted in the next week or so. Exciting times, people!

Where We Are

I know I've been absent here. I've kind of had the blog on hiatus while we were dealing with selling the house, and while we're still dealing with that, this seems like a good time to update.

So here's what's been happening since my last post. Both of our families came together on a couple of days to help with the final push getting our house to market. And they (and we) worked HARD! And we got it all finished. A few days later a very sweet photographer showed up to take listing photos, and we went live a few days later on May 2.

We started getting showings right away, 5 in the first couple of days. And though it eventually slowed down some, it's been very steady. But we've not found the right buyer yet. And the contingency contract we signed on the home we wanted to buy ran out 6 days ago. We contacted the home owners, and they agreed to renew if we wanted, but we wanted to go see the home again. So we went to see it 3 days ago, and we noticed a few things that hadn't really stood out to us before. We still love the home, but basically there are too many things that would need to be taken care of as soon as we move in for us to be able to afford with the combination of their asking price and the profit we're likely to get from selling our current home. So after much prayer and discussion, we opted not to renew our contract with them. And we've not ruled it out completely, but there are a few things that would have to change if we do buy it. And of course it may sell before ours does, so we're just trusting God to work things according to His plan. 

So anyway, here are a few pics of our current home. You know, if you're in the market.

The Kitchen. We painted the cabinets white a few months ago, and I couldn't believe how much it brightened up the whole space. 

That pantry cabinet holds a TON.

That hallways leads down to a bathroom and two bedrooms, plus a linen closet. And that door you see just down the hall is a pretty roomy under-stairs storage closet.

The Living Room. First of all, I feel that I should point out that the stuffed fish, deer head, and ducks on the walls are not actually part of the building structure. This might seem obvious, but we did in fact have one viewer that left feedback that they didn't like the house because of the taxidermy. Those are, uh, ours. Fear not, they will be moving with us.

I realize that the couches and chair we chose are a maybe bit large for the room, but frankly we spend most of our time in this room, and it's nice with a family of 5 to have space to comfortably seat 8 so that we can all sit with some space around us. Assuming I can untangle Sawyer from my hair and get Lily off my shoulder.

The Downstairs Bedrooms. 

Bonus picture of Sawyer helping paint before the new carpet went in.

When we just had Taylor, this one was our family room/den. It's very roomy.

The Downstairs Bath. I hate trying to get pictures of bathrooms, don't you? Anyway, it's a full bath.

The Master Bedroom. This is where all the magic happens.*

I can't quit staring at my crooked bedspread. What happened? Anyway, lots of room and his and hers closets.

The En Suite Bathroom. Also a full bath.

The Great Outdoors. This deck has a fresh paint job here. And by fresh paint job, I mean we decided the night before the photographer came to go ahead and paint it, and we did much of this by...flashlight. Fortunately it proved quite passable by the light of day.

The Back Yard.

One last shot of the outside. The roof is 3 years old, and the HVAC unit with air purifier is 5 years old.

If you or anyone you know in the area is interested in a great starter home in a quiet older neighborhood, please feel free to contact our Realtor using the form on the listing page.

So anyway, that's la casa. Meanwhile, we're still planning and praying (but praying more than planning). The really excellent news is that all this waiting and showing is getting the whole family in excellent practice for keeping a neat and tidy house, and with so much of our stuff in storage, we're really finding out just how much we can live without. Except for my craft stuff. I need all of that. All of it.

*I just ruined this post, and possibly this whole blog for my mom. Sorry, Mom. Mystery of the grandkids revealed.

Home

Gratuitous shot of my cute kiddos, because what's a post without a picture?

Okay, so I'm still here. I even have projects to blog about. It's just that there have been such big things going on in my life that I can't seem to put them all into words. It seems hard to post about small things without talking about big things. But God has been moving here, and it is important that I talk about that.

So I've mentioned that we've been getting our house ready to list. And it's a process that has stretched out longer than we've wanted, but God's timing is in everything. There is a house that we had been looking at since January. We really liked it, and it had many, many of the things we want/need in a new home. A big garage for Nick, bedrooms for all the kids, a space for a craft room for me, even a bit of extra room for a play room. And it was close to the price we were looking for. We had been to view it inside a couple of times, and we were just waiting to get our own house on the market before we made an offer.

Finally, after talking to our Realtor (who was also their Realtor), he indicated that the homeowners would be open to a contingency offer since we were so close to listing. So we made an offer. And we waited. And they had another offer from another buyer. And they came back to both of us and asked us both to submit our very best offers. So we gave them our walk-away price, and we waited and prayed. And finally they decided - on the other offer.

And while we had prayed and prayed that God's will would be done here, whether or not that meant us getting this particular house, it was hard for me for a bit. Because I'm silly and human and imperfect and eventhoughIknowbetter, sometimes I get impatient with God. And this feeling sad and a little teary went on for about an hour.

Then Nick found a listing online that we had never seen before, mostly, I'm sure, because it had only been on the market for 9 days, and we were concentrating on the other house. It looked very interesting to say the least, and we decided to see if we could go see it the next day. As luck would have it, the owners were happy to let us come by.

The home is partially renovated, with most of the major work done, but there is still a lot to do. Most of it is relatively minor, tile installation, painting, etc, all things we can do ourselves, although there are a few bigger things still to be done too. A lot of work. A lot.

We fell head over heels in love. In. Love. We prayed about it, and we felt liberty to put in an offer. So I texted the homeowners to thank them for letting us look and tell them that we would like to make an offer. Then we called our Realtor to let him know. I think he was caught off guard, because this was just a day or two after he had to deliver the news that our offer on the other house had been rejected, but he was happy to contact the owners of this new listing for us.

Longish story shortish, the owners decided to accept our offer, even though we've not officially listed our house yet, and we have a signed contract! We also have 90 days (a bit less now) to sell our own home. We go to market next Monday, ready or not, and tomorrow we've got (hopefully) lots of help coming to knock out the last bit that we have left to do. Guys, I don't want to share too many details about the new house at this point, but I just have to say that it has things I never in my wildest dreams believed we would have. God is SO very good to us, ALL THE TIME, and He constantly amazes me with how He blesses us.

He's already moving us through this process, starting with the homeowners accepting an offer from us when we didn't even have our own house listed yet (and yes, they knew this). And today brought another big answer to prayer. One of the biggest things about the first house we were looking at that was not ideal for us was the high school it would have Taylor zoned for. It's not a bad school, but it's also not our first choice, or even our second or third. Our first choice is the high school attached to (like in the same parking lot as) the middle school she's in now, but due to the crazy zoning in our area, even if we stayed right where we are, next year she would go to a high school in the next community.

So a few months ago we put in a request for a transfer to our first choice high school. And to be honest, I wasn't holding out great hope that we would be approved. Transfers around here are notoriously hard to get unless you are a teacher zoned outside of your school of employment or your kid is highly involved in a school specific program. But we submitted the transfer request and prayed for the best. And it turns out that this house we have an offer in on now is zoned for the same high school as the first house we tried to buy. But we felt God telling us to put in the offer, so we were trusting that He had a plan for that too, whether that meant that He wanted Taylor there for a reason or whether He had another plan.

Today we got a letter in the mail telling us that Taylor has been approved to attend the high school we want her to attend! There are still hurdles to overcome, the biggest of which is going to be selling our house in the next two and a half months for the right price, but I believe that God's hand is in this as well, and we want to give Him all the glory for whatever comes out of this situation.

I can't see the whole picture yet, but I can see some of the ways He has been blessing us, guiding things with His hand and timing even when we've been impatient. If we had been able to get our house listed when we wanted to, we would have doubtless made an earlier offer on that first house. And it probably would have been accepted. That home was on the market for over a year before it sold, and the offers from us and the buyer they sold it to were the first offers they had gotten on it. When we lost it, I thought "Man! If we hadn't waited so long we would have gotten it!" And that's probably true. But that was not the house God had for us.

The house we have a contract on now is so much more perfect for us in so many ways, and it offers things I never imagined. And if we had gotten an earlier answer on that first house, we would have completely missed seeing this house, because they didn't even list it until the day after we decided to finally submit an offer on the first house. He kept us interested in and mentally committed to that first house until this one was ready. Even if we had been told no on the first house earlier, we might have tried to buy another house before this one became available, and we might have missed out! God always knows what's best for us, and, something that I think I sometimes forget, He always wants what's best for us.

So I can't say 100% for sure at this point that our house will sell in our time frame, but I can say that if it does not, if for some reason the path we are on suddenly veers to the left, God's hand will be on it. It won't be because it was just too big of an obstacle for Him to handle. He loves us, and He has a plan for our lives, and if He doesn't put us in that home, it's because He has something for us to do somewhere else, or even right where we are. And if we are where He wants us to be, wherever that is, it will be Home.

The Christmas Season

Guys, I finally have my computer back! I'm so excited! It took forever, but it's good as new now, and I can't wait to get to posting again!

Did you guys have a good Christmas and New Year's? Our New Year's was less than ideal, sick babies and selves, and Sawyer threw up on me and Nick in literally the last 10 seconds of 2014. Yuck!

But we're all better now, and our Christmas was great! I've got lots of things to share with you, but I wanted to start out with a few pictures I took this year.

These were from sessions I did with my niece and nephews.

Levi and Adelaide

Lawrence

This one was their Christmas card this year.

And here are a few from our little church Christmas play service.

Sawyer Ford (literally) Driving By

My Mom and Dad with all 6 grandbabies.

All the grandbabies in their Christmas pj's on Christmas Eve.

A couple of the cowboys patrolling the range this year. They were all SO cute!

This was such a blessed Christmas season, and we have so much to be thankful for!