Please God, tell me one pair enough because I hate shopping. (Seriously…you try finding cute heels that won’t exacerbate your suck-o-la sense of balance or your lower back pain and that don’t accentuate your cankles and boat sized feet!)

What do you think?

And? THEY WERE HALF OFF!

Plus, remember how lots of you didn’t really care for the exterior of the house plan that I love? Let me refresh your memory:

I have been driving all over Cache Valley looking at house exteriors and building materials and I think I have found a house that almost identical on the exterior that I love and want to emulate. What do you think? There are of course, changes I want to make (Click to see my notes of what I like and want to keep and what I would change) but over all I love it.

It uses stone, siding and shingles, but none of them are too heavy. The stone gable is too big, but I would just keep it at the size of the house plan. Again, I made a few notes over on Flickr so just click on the photo if you’re curious.




I even like the back. It’s a sloping lot so it is even a walkout basement like mine will have to be. We won’t have the top deck, but I like how the stairs go down the side of the house instead of the middle.

Friday is the last day of school and I am a tangle of tired and worry (We still don’t know where we are moving to. I wish they would hurry up with the reference checking and such. It would REALLY help my stress if I knew where I was going to be living come June.) so, I am going to go take my sleepy self to bed.

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I love changing my hair. I do it frequently and have had an awful lot of changes over the years, including a really unfortunate habit of using bottles of “Sun In’ combined with spiral perms in Jr. High. At least then I had the excuse of age. I was 24 when I made the hideous decision to execute a blond pixie cut inspired by a late night viewing of Sliding Doors. NOT a good idea. I only have one photo of it and it is microscopic. Sorry!)

I could tell a story behind each of these photos, but I’m already subjecting you to 30 years of hair and I figure that is enough punishment for anyone. (Huge apologies to my male readers. I know this must be TOTALLY fascinating to you all. Right up there with sitting on a chair waiting for your spouse to to try on a plethora of outfits, huh?

Since there are eleventyhundred photos in this post, I’m going to take advantage of that spiffy “More” option that Wordpress has. Sorry some of them are so tiny. I lost most of my early photos and so I didn’t have a lot to choose from..

Continue reading →

…because I found out this afternoon that I am moving in exactly TWO WEEKS.

TWO.

As in one-plus-one.

NOT the TWO TO THREE MONTHS I was planning on.

I went from being the depressed sloth curled up in my scrubs eating cookie dough to going a million miles an hour. I’m trying to get the kids out of school, they have tons of sports practices and games, during the moving period they are also signed up for a music theater camp, I’m trying to learn a role that opens in three weeks, sell my house, find an apartment/house/townhome/condo to rent, pack, move, unpack, and then deal with having Memorial Day and Matthew’s birthday all come right during the time I am picking up and leaving the only home he ever knew. Oh, and I’m also supposed to be shopping for coordinating outfits for our family to wear to our family portrait shoot the week after we move in. Did I mention that I suck at shopping? I’m the one who bought the fugly Jessica Simpson bag after all.

I guess I have learned my lesson: Don’t bitch to the universe about being in aforementioned slug state or it just may intervene and avalanche a whole crapload of FREAKING BUSY onto your head.

“I’M SORRY, UNIVERSE/KARMA/GOD/EARL!!! Whatever I did to you, I TOTALLY TAKE IT BACK, OK?!!!”

I am freaking out of my mind. We went and saw a brand new townhouse that is beautiful, nice bedrooms SMALL family area and NO PANTRY. That last thing right there? Yeah, that may be a freaking deal breaker.

So…I am in a mad dash locating and looking at rentals that are large enough to store me, my family and our respective stuff. It’s more difficult than you would think.

One thing that is a definite? There had better be plenty of places for me to store those forks I’m going to be stabbing into my eyes.

I should have titled this post, “I have researched and you will now PAY!”. I’ve spent the better part of eleventry hundred hours pouring over house plans on the internet until my eyes feel like they are rupturing. I have looked at hundreds of house plans and tons of photos of houses as well as driving around looking at real estate.

The good news? I have picked a design style that I like.

I have determined that while I love a whole bunch of different styles, I have always ADORED the craftsman style homes that I see. Whenever a house really makes my head snap around, that is almost always the style of construction that is used. So, for now, that is the plan. To go “Craftsman”.

Speaking of plans…

We were originally going to draft our own plans, but truthfully, I would rather buy existing plans that are as close as we can come to what we want and then get them modified as necessary. It’s WAY less time and effort but not nearly as expensive as having custom home plans designed and drafted.

I never thought that we would be building this much house at this stage in our lives, and we wouldn’t if the lot wasn’t so amazing. This lot is so perfect for us that I could honestly seeing myself dying on this hunk of land and being buried under one of my SEVERAL MATURE TREES. Mature trees that are right next to a BARN!

SO?

We are going to budget, put all our money into construction, exterior, and things that can’t be changed easily (like cabinets) and skimp on things like flooring and fixtures. I am planning not having hardware on the cabinets for awhile. Things like that. Sigh.

We’re being our own general contractor and putting a lot of sweat equity in. Luckily, we know what is cheaper to do on our own vs. what should be hired out. I would never attempt this if my FIL wasn’t an electrician and virtually every person in my hubs family has built a ton of houses from the plans to the finish work. We have loads of connections and Jonathan has worked a lot of construction, so it is doable. A PAIN IN THE HEINY, but doable. Being our own generals and doing a lot of the work will save us a ton of money, so it’s worth it.

Anyway…here are the two plans that we like the most thus far. What do you think?

HOUSE PLAN A

Living Area: 3,268 sq. ft.
Main Flr: 2,122 sq. ft.
2nd Floor: 1,146 sq. ft.
Attached Garage: 3 car, 629 sq. ft.
Other Unfinished Space: 978 sq. ft.
Bedrooms: 4/5
Full Bathrooms: 4
Half Bathrooms: 1

I think that I like this floor plan the most. I am thinking it is a bit big because the basement will remain unfinished for quite some time. Without that it still comes in at almost 3,300 sq. ft.

The reason the plans have to be bigger is due to my requirements for the main floor: Master suite, a room close to the master for (hopefully) a baby and a dining room space that we would enclose for a formal living/music room. I want to be able to open my door and have people into my house without them seeing my everyday living space.

I like the loft upstairs for the boys for as a play area/toys and crap all over the place. They would each have a bedroom, Jonathan’s office would be in the corner. We would take out the second bath up there to extend the space and make the Jack and Jill bathroom into a traditional bath by flipping it around, closing off room access and putting a door in the hallway to make it accessible to everyone.

I love the huge dining area next to the kitchen and how only part of the great room is two story. Sometimes the whole room being vaulted is just TOO MUCH. Especially because we are going to be going cheaper on the flooring. Laminates echo a lot more than hardwoods, so it would cut down on that.

I love the study next to the master bedroom. Again, we would (Hopefully) use it as a nursery/small child’s room, which means there would be no master entry. It has one of my pet peeves, which is walking through the bathroom to get to the closet, but I think we may be able to play with that. Ideally, we want his and hers walk-ins.

We would also enclose the formal dining room for a formal living room/music room so that my house is presentable at all times and the living space isn’t seen (Yay!) We plan on doing that in all the floor plans because it would be used way more than a formal dining area.
We would also have to play with the laundry/mudroom and add a walk in pantry in the kitchen (A must. I have to have somewhere to store the assloads of wheat my mother has forced me to purchase lately.)

I am not crazy about the exterior, but that is mainly because it is shown in stucco (Which I am just not a fan of.) I would use siding, shingles and sedimentary rocking. I think with that, a different color scheme, wooden garage doors with the craftsman windows at the top and different windows, I would be fine with it.

HOUSEPLAN B

2675 Total Living Area
# 2067 Main Level
# 608 Upper Level
# 4 Bedrooms
# 3 Full Bath(s) , 1 Half Bath(s)
# 3 Car Garage
# 83′ Wide x 60′ Deep

I love the exterior of this plan the most. It’s adorable. I wouldn’t really tweak it very much (except to take the curve out of the window. I HATE them. Craftman style houses should never use them IMO), although I don’t know if I would add the wood doohicky’s at the peak of each gable. we’d have to see how expensive/pain in the butt they are to add.

It is the smallest, but considering that the floor plan is virtually the same sq.ft on the main floor as the others, the only thing that is smaller is the upstairs. If we went with this floor plan, we would have to enclose the bonus room for Jonathan’s office instead of building a loft in it with upper story access like we would do with the other two plans.

We would take the storage at the back of the garage and take out the bathroom for a very large mud room, laundry and sewing area (Yes. I can sew.) We would close in the dining room and add French doors (Living/music room). We would also take out the utility closet and add hallway access to the bathroom and to the study from that area and close off access from the foyer and use it as a nursery.

The master bath and closets in this plan are PERFECTLY arranged for us, but the dining nook is much smaller (BOO!). We want to be able to fit a big ass table with leaves in there with plenty of room for people to walk around because we KNOW that our house will become the “Family holiday gathering place” once it is done.

Keep in mind that we are in the very baby stages of this process. I know what I want, but when push comes to shove, the budget that we end up with will dictate a LOT of what happens, so I fully expect a million changes before the process is done.

I do feel happy about the progress as far as knowing what I would ideally like and the style because before I just sat there going “HUH?” and it was overwhelming.

Oh, who the hell am I kidding. It’s STILL overwhelming.

Am I the only person that is totally grossed/freaked out by the new series of Orken extermination commercials? You know, the ones with the 7 ft bugs that come to the door and asks if they can come in using the creepiest voice since that guy who narrates City Confidential on A&E???

They seriously make my skin CRAWL. Which means that they are doing their job, but STILL…SHUDDER.

Happy 32nd birthday, Jonathan.

I love you.

I got my bag from Bluefly.com today.

The UPS guy drove up just as I was starting the hideous task of de-jungling my yard and flower beds. Jonathan’s birthday is on Saturday and he has opted to take his geeky self and several of his geeky friends down to his office to spend the whole day and night with their geeky computers all networked together to play endless amounts of geeky computer games.

Not MY idea of a fantabulous birthday, but since I don’t have a million and one Leathermans, flashlights, phones and other forms of geekary attached to my belt at all times, I know that I “Just don’t get it”. It’s his day, he can do what he wants. I just want him to be happy.

As I will be kid-free that night, I will most likely be curled up with a good book or movie and possibly a vat of cookie dough, but you didn’t hear that here.

Back to my yard.

Since Jonathan is turning 32 (YES. HE IS OLDER THAN I AM, OK? He loves calling me “Mrs. Robinson”. We are not amused.), I did want to celebrate his birthday at some point. We have good friends that grew up with Jonathan visiting from Virgina and since we wanted to get together with everyone we just decided to throw a BBQ on Friday to celebrate both events.

Which means our first outdoor party of the year.

Which means I don’t just have to clean my house, I also have to get my yard ready. Which is not easy. My trip to Minnesota (and my inadequacy of dealing with my life-suck) has put me WAY behind on my yard. The biggest problem has been with our mower. It has been at the shop since the first thaw and so my yard has been HORRIBLE. The weeds in my area are crazy bad, too. It took a very long time, some serious swearing and about 3 herniations to get the whole project done.

I swear I thought I was going to find Jimmy Hoffa amongst the weeds in my back garden. GAH! I managed to get the 200 lbs of Sienna red chips scattered, all the flowers planted and my herbs potted, and made sure that all half acre of the lawn was mowed, even though it means that I am going to need to take eleventyhundred Aleve so that I can walk tomorrow. Although, since I also had a rehearsal full of the Charleston combined with tons of frantic house cleaning, I REALLY don’t think that there is much chance of that. I am in bucketloads of back pain and I can just imagine what a night on my suckass bed is going to make me feel like in the morning.
Back to my yard. Again.
All through my gardening process, I kept eying my box from Bluefly. I left it on the porch as a visual reminder that I had something AWESOME waiting for me. Call it a, ‘Don’t stick the pruning clippers in your eye, Loralee. Just finish the damn garden so you can open me!” pep talk if you will.
I finally got the last of the weeds thrown in the wheelbarrow as it turned officially dark and then went inside to guzzle water and open my box to see my new purse!!!!

DUDE.

Total disappointment.

It’s…Boring. And stiff. And the leather is nubby, which you can’t see in the photo and which I hate. The ruffles look stiff and awkward instead of feminine and it just isn’t something that I really want to spend a hundred bucks on, even if it was 60% off.

AND…it was designed by JESSICA SIMPSON.

I think that last tidbit was the final nail in the coffin for me.

It’s so disappointing.

It’s SO being sent back.