Home. Finally

Hello. Remember me? So the blog has been on hiatus for a few months, but I'm just about ready to start up regular posting again. Here's what's been going on: we bought a house!

Here is a somewhat condensed version of the whole long, painful process: when I last posted about the house situation at the end of the year, we were still on the market and had had two contracts fall through. This was...disheartening to say the least. Then in February we finally had another buyer! Our closing date was set for March 24, and the race was on to find a new house.

We. Looked. At. So. Many. Houses. Our realtor Matt Cupp of the Derek Maples Team at Keller Williams Realty was soooo incredibly patient with us. We were looking for 4 bedrooms, 2+ baths, a 2 car garage, roughly the area we were already in, with a still reasonable commute to work for Nick, fenced in back yard, AND a bonus room/5th bedroom for a craft room. It was the craft room that was a killer for us. There were 4 bedroom houses galore, but very little with a space for me.

Then we found this amazing house that we fell in love with. It had everything we wanted. Everything. And the craft space was a detached space the size of an extra long single car garage, with its own bathroom and huge closet. It was a foreclosure, bank owned, and bidding was open. So we put in our very best, maybe even stretched a little too far bid. But we felt pretty confident that we would get it. Our bid was solid, we had a closing date already set for the sale of our old house, and had already been through inspection on it. Nick's dad has years of construction experience, and he checked out the new property for us, so we were even submitting our bid with no inspection contingency.

Nick's parents loved it, my parents loved it, we loved it, the kids loved it. This was it. THE HOUSE. And then...

A cash offer came in. They went with the other buyers. We were devastated. But we knew God had a reason. And the old house was sold, so we had to pick ourselves up and start looking again. Nothing we saw appealed to us. Everything looked so unsuitable next to the house we had lost. We ran poor Matt all over Knoxville and Powell and Maynardville and Clinton. There were a couple of houses that would have technically worked, but our heart just wasn't in them. We actually signed a contract on one, but were relieved when the inspection came back with issues that allowed us to back out of it, because we just didn't love it like the one we had lost.

Then Matt showed us the newly listed house on Cartmill Dr. And we loved it. And we bought it. We closed on April 22 and moved in the same day. Right now there are still a lot of boxes in sight, but we are making progress. And there's even a craft room!

Here's a quick recap of the journey over the last year with selling and buying: 136 showings, 3 contracts, foundation damage and repair, 5 (FIVE!) extensions on the closing date, 4 weeks living with my parents, and 1 contract extension on the contract for the new house (because of the 5th extension for the buyer on the old house). This was the 5th house we had made an offer on, and the 3rd one we had had a contract on.

I have to give a shout out to our whole realty team. Derek Maples of the Derek Maples Team of Keller Williams listed our house for us last year in a very slow market and kept a constant stream of buyers coming through. As I mentioned, we had 136 showings. And he was a serious rock star when it came to getting us through closing. Unfortunately our buyer's finance company dropped the ball a number of times, causing the 5 extensions, which resulted in our closing getting delayed 29 days. Derek really advocated for us and ended up getting that finance company to reimburse us for the expenses we incurred due to those delays, which was a huge lifesaver for us.

Matt Cupp showed us house after house, and often checking listings out in person without us beforehand when we were unavailable for showings. He showed us houses as early as 7AM and as late as 9PM, every day of the week. He worked hard to get us the price we needed on the house we bought, and he showed up at closing with a lovely etched glass casserole dish as a housewarming gift. He was almost always available to take my call, and he was awesome about getting back to me quickly if he was unable to answer. Even though we went through way more listings that most of his clients, he never got impatient or tried to push us into buying a house that we wouldn't be happy with. We always felt safe in his care, and we could tell that his goal was our happiness, not his commission.

Brandon White is the Director of Operations for the Derek Maples Team, and he really is the glue that holds it all together. I could always call him if I had a question, and he was there to hold my hand at closing on the old house. He followed up on a lot of items for me, especially during the drawn out closing process.

This was a really long process for all of us, through no fault at all of anyone (except maybe our buyer's finance company, but that was only the last few weeks), and they never gave up on us or lost patience with us. I can't say enough about how much we love them. If we ever decide to sell this house (not that I can even imagine that at this point), we will definitely go with them again.

Most important to us was the fact that this is a team that puts God first. Their motto is God, Family, Real Estate, in that order, and they have a weekly prayer meeting for their clients every Thursday morning.

So anyway, that is what the last 5 months have looked like. Now that we are finally home, we can start settling in, and I can start sharing a few of the crafty things I've managed to squeeze in!

Since right now we're not quite ready for pictures, I'm going to leave you with the listing photos, courtesy of Zillow. We have put up a fan in the master bedroom, but otherwise we've not done much else.

LOVE all the wainscoting!

My new Craft Room!

A laundry room! No more laundry in the garage!

This closet. I die!

Secret pass through door between Sawyer's and Lily's room.

Craftaholics Anonymous Handmade Gift Exchange Winter 2015

For several years now I've participated in the Craftaholics Anonymous Handmade Gift Exchange, and it's always a blast! This round I was paired with the lovely Lisa Hickey of Caron Designs. She sent me such neat things! This was round one (yes, round one).

First was this gorgeous flattened wine bottle cheese tray. I've been fascinated with flattened glassware for years, but as I'm lacking a kiln it's not really a craft I can do, so I was thrilled with it. Unfortunately this beautiful piece got cracked in shipping. However, it worked out, as you will see.

She also sent this adorable handpainted flattened jar soap dish which currently lives beside my kitchen sink.

There were also these two delicious smelling soaps, one of which is in the above soap dish in my kitchen and the other of which is in our downstairs bath.

Last were these awesome original artwork greeting cards.

I contacted Lisa to let her know how much I loved everything, and I mentioned that the cheese platter had been cracked in shipping. The break was a very clean one, and I wanted to ask her advice on the best glue to use to repair it. I also wanted to let her know in case she wanted to contact her shipping company to be reimbursed for this damage. She generously told me that she would take care of it and that I should expect a new one later in the week! I promise I was not trying to wrangle a new one from her, but I was so touched by her generosity!

So a few days later I got another package in the mail, and sure enough there was another gorgeous platter, this one clear.

But also included was this lovely pair of glass bead earrings.

And this beautiful fused glass star ornament. When I was getting to know her work online these stars were one of the creations that really caught my eye, so I was thrilled to get one! It went waaaaay up high on my Christmas tree to keep it away from the grabby hands of the short people in my house.

So here's what I sent Lisa:

I made her these two little Christmas pillows from drop cloth and heat transfer vinyl. This one was made from drop cloth I hand dyed a deep cranberry red. The bell shape was purchased from the Silhouette Design Store. My favorite part of it is the tiny bell dotting the i in Jingle.

This one was left the natural color, and the heat transfer vinyl was cut from a Tulip Twilight Shimmer Transfer Sheet. (Not an affiliate link) I actually found these on clearance at one of the discount stores (Ross? Burkes? TJ Maxx? I can't remember).  I was a little nervous cutting it with my Cameo, but it worked great.

Next I made her three memory wire bracelets. I love these as gifts because they work for any size wrist and are easy to put on and take off for little hands that can't manage clasps well yet and older hands that struggle with arthritis and everybody in between. I wanted them to work well for Christmas yet still be versatile enough to wear the rest of the year, so I chose the colors accordingly.

I also made these fun snowman earrings, and they were embarrassingly easy to put together. 

They started out like this, so all I did was literally add the ear wires and backings.

Like always, this was so much fun, and I'm so grateful to Linda of Craftaholics Anonymous for hosting again and Lisa for partnering with me! I'll be linking up at the Handmade Gift Exchange Linky Party.

Hodge Podge End of Year Update

Guys. Come on now. You didn't really think I was going to go the whole rest of 2015 without blogging again, did you? Okay, okay, so I'm cutting it close, but I've been a little busy. Here's all that's been happening:

First of all, the house. We got the foundation work all completed, and it is now completely steady and under a transferable lifetime warranty. Unfortunately, the buyer ended up backing out with no real explanation the very day we were having the work done. So that was disappointing, but the foundation repair needed to be done either way, so we are more prepared than ever for when the right buyer comes along. We also put in new kitchen counter tops and new backsplash along the sink wall, so it went from this:

to this:

Halloween was definitely better this year than last, but I didn't do anything crafty in the costume department. Or take really any pictures, apparently. This seems to be the sole picture I have of the two littles who trick or treated. Lily was either Rapunzel or Sophia the First, depending on her mood and whether or not she wanted to wear the wig. Sawyer was a little more put together as a pirate. But seriously, what was the deal with this picture? Mom/photographer/blogger fail.

We also had a couple of things going on with the ladies ministries at church. Our Teachers of Good Things group had their quarterly craft meeting, and this time around we made easy burlap wreaths. Nick came up with a pile of wire coat hangers and helped me (mostly just did it for me) shape them into wreath forms. Then we just unhooked the top, accordion folded burlap ribbon, threaded it on, and rehooked the top. My awesome mom, who is a licensed florist, whipped up burlap bows for everyone.

My SIL Leah the wreath model.

We used basically this tutorial on Just Call Me Homegirl although as I mentioned, we accordion folded the burlap instead of zigzagging/twisting to save on time because our church life center had a second event happening after ours. In retrospect, I wish we had followed Homegirl's tutorial more exactly, because folding it the way we did required more burlap (about 15 yards a wreath) and I found that over time it tends to compress and sag down to the bottom. I think it would work well this way if you were to first use a fabric stiffener on the ribbon.

We also did a fun Christmas Sock Exchange/Cookie Party. Everyone brought a fun pair of new Christmas socks filled with goodies and we all baked cookies and exchanged socks. So fun!

In other news, I finally got to upgrade to a Cameo, and I did a lot of fun projects for Christmas with it, I made a couple of cool guy gifts out of paracord, I made some awesome drop cloth Christmas stockings, and I participated in the Craftaholics Anonymous Handmade Gift Exchange again, all of which deserve their own post. Happy New Year, guys!