500 things

Since Spring is knocking on our door... (do you hear that Spring? Knock dammit!) I figured I'd get a jump on spring cleaning, kind of like really premature nesting, you know since I'm not even a little bit pregnant right now. So I've decided to get rid of 500 things before the end of the month. In order to hold myself accountable I thought I would share this goal with the whole world, all 3 of my readers!
The rules:
-everything counts as one, but papers do not (I have thousands of sheets of scrapbooking paper I'm sure) ergo a pair of socks is two things-- 500 is a BIG number!
-I've told Adam that if I get rid of 20 books I should get a Kindle, he's mulling that over
-I'm going to donate as much as I can, and clothes that are undonatable will go into my scrap bin, but will still count as removed from the house
-I should count the stuff I bring into the house against my 500, but I'm not (my game- my rules!)
-I will not save clothes, I will be ruthless. I figure that if I lose weight after baby #7 I should deserve new stuff, ya know? Also Adam may not know, but I'm going to be ruthless to his side of the closet too. Uhm, Honey, those polyester sweaters which make my skin crawl? GONE! And if you really have a deep connection to that too small wool suit, it will be in it's best interest to hide it, the world does not need to see 2 inches of ankle and wrist at formal functions.
-I won't get rid of baby stuff, after all I need to have babies #2-7 first!

I've decided to do this because Trixie is starting to take up more space and we only have 1600 square feet, and I have a lot of clothes that I just don't wear any more. After all lovely dress pants that I wore to the bank are just not suitable for playgrounds and sand boxes.
I also want to make more room in our bedroom so that Trixie can have a play area in there to allow for us to have a couple more minutes of sleep in the morning. Trixie o'clock is frighteningly early!

wish me luck! Also I dare you to try as well!

Holy Moly! We're Grown-ups!

Or otherwise titled as, "Holy Crap We're Buying a House!" or "You Want How Much For 1600 Square Feet?"

So Adam and I have been looking at townhouses for a long time now. We would go and visit our favourite often, languishing at the stairyness and flatness of the floors. Drooling over a bath tub big enough to bathe a whole family of walruses. Yearning for a double garage wide enough for even me to pull in and out of. However that house was expensive and the practical side of me just couldn't see how we could make it work and still maintain our standard of living. Not to mention jumbo mortgage (anything over 417K) rates have totally tanked, so we would have to wait and see what the market did and hope we could find something in our price range, ie under 417K (after downpayment). So every other weekend or so we would go and check out the new developments and see what they had and what the prices were. We were always drawn to the same builder who's layouts we liked the best, but this builder was staunchy in their stance that they have to increase the prices with each release to ensure that their current owners would feel secure that they weren't losing money. They were so determined to continue to raise prices that soon they weren't selling anything. So Adam and I waited, hoping that they would eventually break and offer a whole pile of incentives or drop prices.
They never did.
Adam did some research and found another builder, and we went and checked out one of their newer sites. They houses would be available next September and they were nearly 150K less than the other builder. However Sept. is too far away and we do not want the baby to be in our current house longer that necessary. We like the Feb./ March move ins that we were seeing a lot of. So we went to this builder's other location (which is next to the other builder who we "visited" a lot.) To our dismay they only had one house left. But to torture ourselves we walked though the show home and LOVED IT! It was practically everything we were looking for. A nice bright kitchen, not in the centre of the house. A perfect main floor with plenty of space for us and a large area for a baby play area, (aka baby cage.) A bathtub large enough for a family of walruses, a huge garage, and a den for guests and the treadmill. It was lovely. But it was the last one.
As we left we decided to talk to the sales people and they told us how to have the place reserved and what the down payment would have to be and how we would qualify for 30K in incentives. (20K from the builder to buy the place and additional 10K from them because of who Adam's new employer is.) So Adam and I left, feeling excited that this place and plotting how we could make it work. We knew that the time line was tight, but we could make it work. When we got home, we laid out the whiteboard and assessed all of the other places, along with the ones available in September. Then we played devil's advocate for all of them. And sure enough the one we loved the most and was the best choice was the one we had seen that day. So the next morning bright and early we went back to the sales office and gave the first part of the down payment to reserve the place for us. We would then have to be preapproved for a mortgage. And just now I found out we were. So we're going to buy a new house! And move in the same month that the baby is born!
I'm so effin' excited I might throw up!

Here's the house.