The Many Adventures of Home Ownership: Fence Edition

A couple of months ago we had a very intense "wind storm" here in Austin.  Now, I know what all you guys living in the midwest or on the east coast are thinking...how can anyone in Austin complain about the weather?  And you're right...except that the crazy wind knocked down a portion of our fence and broke a piece of our storm door!

Luckily, adjacent to our back fence is a wire belonging to that property, so we were in no hurry to fix it.  Especially since Marcie likes the new view! 

Jump forward to 2 days ago when another insane wind storm came through town.  More fence down and this time it is the fence adjacent to our eastern neighbor.  Boo! 

As you can probably see, she has a very nice yard with no weeds and it is well kept...whereas we have a dog and a new baby and little experience with landscaping.  So we really don't want Marcie pooping in the neighbors yard.  Time to call in the fence repair experts.  Hope it won't be too expensive! Any suggestions from those of you that live in Austin??

We brought in all of Marcie's toys from outside (for some reason she always takes them out there and leaves  them.)  She was watching me the whole time.  I think she was trying to figure out what we were doing!

Once everything was inside it didn't take her long to make a mess!  She doesn't seem to like when her toys are in the "toy box."

Our House

We are moving into the house on Monday.  Yay!  We have been working hard to get it all ready and we are SO ready to be living there.  Please ignore the dead looking grass in the front yard...it doesn't rain here much and it is CRAZY hot!

 

The painting is done...for now.  I am sure I will do more painting later (especially the nursery once we find out the baby's sex and work out a decor theme) but we are done for now.

 

Before (Living Room right - Dining Room left)

 

After

 

We (or I guess I should say, I) chose much more neutral colors :)

We also painted the upstairs "gameroom."  It wasn't painted before but we wanted to add some color to the upstairs.  I love this bright blue color!

 

I am sure you noticed Logan's tent has already set up camp in the living room.  This tent was so helpful as Shawn and I were getting things ready at the house.  Logan could spend hours in his tent with the iPad...and he did!

 

Last note...I found this awesome houseguest as I was leaving one day last week.  Mom is so excited :)  Gotta love the bugs in Texas!

 

 



Homeowners :)

We started talking about buying a house about 4 months ago.  We knew we were going to be starting our process to pregnancy and our apartment kept raising the rent, so looking for a house seemed like the best option.  We started saving some money and then started looking for a house in May.  It didn't take us too long to find one that we thought would be perfect for us, we made and offered and it was accepted!  We started the process of getting our loan secured and today we closed on our first house!  We are so excited!

Unlocking the door to our house!

The house is in a cute little neighborhood in South Austin called Rancho Alto.  We fell in love with this neighborhood immediately, for several reasons.  First, it isn't a huge neighborhood and every time we drove through people we out walking their dogs or playing with their children and it looked friendly.  Secondly, we knew we wanted to stay in south austin somewhere and it was an affordable neighborhood with really cute houses.  Third (and most importantly), the streets are named after members of the 1980 USA Olympic Hockey Team (the story featured in the movie Miracle).  Our house is on O'Callahan Dr. and neighboring streets are: Jim Craig Ct., Herb Brooks Dr., Craig Patrick Way, Eruzione Dr, McClannahan Dr., etc.  Cool, right?  Well, you probably don't think so but we think its awesome!

Our house is 5 bedrooms (so a bit bigger than we wanted, but that just means there is room for visitors!) with 3 full bathrooms.  We were looking for a house with a bedroom and bathroom downstairs (for mom) but not the master downstairs.  That is hard to find.  This house had it plus 4 additional bedrooms and 2 bathrooms upstairs!  It already had an updated kitchen too!  Plus a really good sized fenced-in backyard for Marcie!  I think she is gonna really love her new yard!

Logan already loves the stairs!

The upstairs hasn't been painted before, so it's very neutral.  I hope to get some color to at least some of  the rooms before we move in. 

Logan is checking that vent for us.

Peek-a-boo from the pantry :)

Toasting our new house with some Sparkling Cider :)

I think Shawn is a bit overexcited!

Our current lease isn't up for about 6 more weeks, so we will have plenty of time to get the house ready before we move in, plus we can move stuff over slowly.  The living room and dining room are painted yellow with one dark red wall, so that whole area needs to be neutralized prior to moving furniture in!  We will be buying new living room stuff eventually, so for now I don't want to add any color downstairs because I'd rather wait until we choose a new couch and things so I can coordinate the colors.  I've been watching HGTV for a long time and now I will get to use some of the stuff I've learned!  We'll start by buying the essentials (mower, fridge, ceiling fans) then cleaning and painting.  We'll post updates as we progress!