Almost closed...

Well, we just have a few more days  before our first  move (we decided on a townhouse in Johnston) and then a few more days after that until we close our Altoona home. Meanwhile we are *almost* closed on the plans and specs of the new house. We had a touch base with Bill the builder today and found out they are moving forward with plotting out the lot, getting financing and building permits. We are still working out the specifics of the plans and specs which we are hoping will be finalized tomorrow so we can close the book on that. Bill said today "the exciting stuff will be happening soon." Ah, I sure hope so! The detail that goes into these documents is starting to get annoying for this impatient girl. We are looking at breaking ground on or around June 6th! That is less than 2 weeks away and I can't tell you how excited I am to see that large hole in the ground that will eventually be our basement!!! Mark your calendars people...this blog is about to get gooood!

Let the packing begin...first stop - Johnston! We will be moving the weekend of June 4th and need to be settled before we jetset off to Orlando for the weekend following and before the close date of June 10th. We are moving right along! On a somewhat related note, I started packing up the basement last week and in order to do so I invested in some really fun bright green plastic Sterilite totes from Target. I already had some blue totes so I though the green ones would be pretty stinkin' cute. There was only one minor detail - the ones I bought are 18 gallon, and too big to fit on our shelves. I only discovered that when they were full so I decided to deal with it and they would have to be the top shelf dwellers. Oh well...ya live, ya learn. I had some neon green and pink labels before - the post-it ones that they show in commercials sticking to anything. Well, they don't so don't waste your 5 bucks on them. Label makers are where it's at...let me tell you about this wonderful little invention I finally decided to pick up for 20 smackers. It is sad how much joy and excitement this brought to my life. When I get done labeling everything at home, I am going to take it to work and label the heck out of my files! Oh the joy of being organized! Seriously, if you ever are thinking about organizing your basement or decide you are going to move, I highly recommend investing some extra moolah in the plastic totes and of course the label maker. I have the totes that latch on the sides so they stay closed - *love*! Plus, God forbid you ever get water in your basement, you don't have to deal with mushy boxes. And just because no blog is complete without a few photos...here a few pictures of the icky first labels and now the new labels from the label maker.

Yep, that's my KitchenAid mixer I swore to my mother I would use in my new house...still standing by that promise, mom! (that is if you are still reading this...sorry, the label maker got me off on a tangent). Goodbye for now...XOXO - j

One day at a time...

Seems like everyone has a blog these days. Up until recently, I didn't feel like I would have anything to blog about...my life certainly wasn't exciting enough that anyone would actually want to read about, in fact, it may have been a bit depressing blogging about the lack of things going on in my life. In a matter of a few weeks, it seems like all that changed. 2010 was a tough year for Brian and I and we vowed to make 2011 OUR year and so far we are on a good track. At the beginning of the year, Brian was asked if he would be interested in being the Product Manager for Dwolla, still at TMG but just a little different role from his Product Development Architect role. He was responsible for many small projects and now he has one huge project with some lofty goals. If you don't know what Dwolla is check it out here (www.dwolla.com) and sign up for an account and use it everyday! That would really help my husband out with before mentioned goals! ;-) In April, I received an offer for an HR Manager position supporting the Marketing department with a May 2nd start date. This has been a goal of mine and feels like a really great accomplishment! Career goals - check and check!

On to the personal life, Brian and I have been on the search for a house for approximately a year. After finding two houses in 2010 that we could have easily loved and lived in for a long time, things weren't quite right. We found a house in October 2010 and were told that the builder would not entertain a contingent offer so we decided to put our house on the market and see how the cards fell. Well, our house didn't exactly sell the first or twentieth time it was shown and time passed and someone picked up our house on Ridgemont. While mildly disappointed, we decided it was probably for the best and we needed to continue with our search. We waited out the winter and still didn't find a place that met all of our "must haves". Our Realtor set up a meeting for us to see Bill Knapp's personal home in Urbandale and there it was -- our perfect home. Too bad it wasn't for sale! Lucky for us Bill owns Ironwood homes and could replicate his gorgeous home on a different lot for us. A few meetings, phone calls and emails later, we picked out a fabulous lot on 141st Street and plans and specs are in motion. Our house will be built in about 4-6 months as long as the weather cooperates (say a prayer for a dry summer). So, back to our house in Altoona. We haven't had many showings in the last couple of week so we figured we had another 4-6 months to sell. We thought we would just wait it out for a little longer and maybe only have to move once. Key word is MAYBE. The week after we made an offer on our new construction house we got an offer on our Altoona home! It was a great offer with one little catch - close on June 10 which was 29 days from when the offer was made! Today is May 15th and if you told me on May 1st that I would be sitting here with this predicament, I'm not sure I would have believed you. Now we have about 2 weeks to find a rental and get moved in. Hence the title of this post...one day at a time...which is about all that I can handle these days. All good problems to have so I certainly am not complaining...Brian and I are delighted to have sold our house and are so anxious to get into our new house later this fall. So, follow us through the building process and all the fun that comes along the way. Can't wait to pick out the toilet paper holders!! XOXO - j

BTW - here are a few pictures of our lot! WOO-HOO!