Knock on Wood, Cross Your Fingers, Hold your Breath & Make a Wish

I tend to be a little superstitious.

For some reason if I say something stupid like “yeah, I’ve been really lucky and haven’t gotten any pimples in a while,” I will immediately break out like a teenager.

I try not to talk about things in progress because I’m afraid that if I celebrate they won’t actually work out.

Oh, and I totally cross my fingers and knock on wood for various reasons.

Well, let’s break this streak today and have a truly awesome (and hopeful) start to 2012.

You know that contract we submitted for our dream house? It was accepted!

Knowing how negotiations work, we asked for a bit more that we actually wanted – namely money off the asking price in addition to seller help with closing costs.

After letting us know that “the sellers were not happy with our offer,” their agent then called our agent less than an hour later to let us know that they were sending over a counter-offer. The adjusted contact came back over and the final numbers ended up being exactly what we wanted to pay in the first place.

And the extremely dorky happy dance begins!

Well, actually for the moment it’s a little bit of a cautious happy dance. Hmm… I’m actually not sure how to do a cautious happy dance. Maybe the same amount of booty shaking and arm flailing, but more of a pensive expression on your face? Anyways, moving on…

Although my dad checked the place out last weekend (he is a custom home builder/renovation extraordinaire and uber-qualified to determine if we were making an [all caps kind of] BIG MISTAKE), we still need to have the place reviewed by the home inspector this Saturday.

They’ll be doing a radon test at the same time and then next week is the water, septic tank and termite tests. All of these expenses are totally adding up (over 1k so far) so my check writing hand is not very happy. And yes, I know that the sellers are giving us a bunch off at settlement, so it really does all even out in the end. But right now my checkbook is on fire and I hate spending money unless it’s for something fun or yummy!

Once all the tests and inspections are finished, we still have to hold our breath until the mortgage stuff goes through. Of course, I’m being silly because we’ve already been thoroughly checked out and pre-qualified. I just have that feeling that things are too freaking awesome to be true and something big, bad and smelly is just around the corner.

If all goes according to plan, we will be going to settlement on the new house on January 27th. Yes, that’s right… 23 days from today. Holy crackers!

I don’t know whether to reconvene for a group happy dance with my husband and dog, run home and start packing, or breathe into a paper bag! All three at once would be difficult, but I am a very good multitasker…

New Year: New House?

After a much needed week off from pretty much everything (including blogging), I’m back!

This past year went by so quickly and I was surprised when I got an email from my blogging site that congratulated me on 77 posts. That’s a lot of posts! I mean, I’m no Younghouselove posting 2 times each weekday, but I’m pretty proud of myself for keeping this going since last March.

My goal for 2012 is to post at least two times each week and get to a total of 125 posts for the year. With a new job, new baby, new house and lots of marketing/business stuff thrown in there for good measure, I should have a lot to talk about!

Oh wait, did I say new house?

If you’ve been following along with my saga, you already know that we sold our townhouse in October. However, since I also lost my job around the same time, we couldn’t buy a new house and instead moved into a rental. As luck would have it, I landed a new job pretty quickly and started in early December.

Even though we weren’t really *looking* for houses, I was still using redfin.com on a regular basis to keep track of what was out there and save potential winners to my account favorites. On Christmas Day, my husband and I drove around to our top 10 houses to check out (um…by this I mean stalk) the neighborhoods. Based on our drive-by, we were able to knock a bunch of houses off the list and also mark down two of our absolute favorites.

Since I was off work between Christmas and New Year’s, I went and toured our remaining top six houses with our real estate agent (who also happens to be my aunt) and my mom. The two houses from our drive-by favorite list were pretty great inside too – so I set up a second showing so that my husband and father (a custom home builder who wanted to “kick the tires”) could see them.

We came up with one clear winner – a house that meets almost every single piece of our ‘dream house’ criteria.

It’s on two acres of land, has a four car garage (yes, my husband is doing a happy dance), a beautiful kitchen with granite, and plenty of rooms inside to meet our needs. There are a number of projects that need to be done to really make the house perfect for us, mostly wallpaper removal, painting, buying a new oven and dishwasher, and completely renovating an ugly bathroom. It’s all pretty doable though, since I love a good project to focus on.

After much deliberation, we decided to go for it. We submitted our contract early this morning (after signing a few dozen sheets of paper last night around midnight) and now we’re waiting to hear if they accept our offer or will be sending through a counter-offer. Since the property is available immediately, we could go to settlement by the end of the month. Which seems absolutely incredible if you think of what a mess everything was just a few months ago!

We hope to hear something back from their agent soon, so I’ll be trying to keep my mind off of it for the rest of the day. Yeah….as if that’s possible. I admit I’ve pretty much drawn out plans for decorating each room of the house already. Cross your fingers that I don’t get my heart broken!

Take This Image and Pin It

This may not come as a surprise to some of you, being that I’m a dorky visual person who keeps an “idea box” with stuff that sparks my creativity for graphic design projects. I also tend to keep magazines for way too long because I loved something about a particular page… only to find the magazine months or years later and not remember which page I liked and why.

One of my little pleasures is decorating (or re-decorating) a room for a ridiculously small budget by doing everything myself. In fact, I’m currently in the middle of a bunch of different projects for our baby’s room, which will most likely all be completed next week since I have time off from work.

I guess I should just come out and confess… I’m obsessed with Pinterest.

For anyone not familiar with the website, Pinterest is a virtual pinboard which allows you to organize and share stuff you find on the internet. Whether it is a super snazzy white ceramic owl or an inspiration room where you’re obsessed with the wall color, you can “pin” it on your very own board for future viewing.  The best part is that the original link that you found is included in the pin, so you can find it again in the future.

So right now I have boards with ideas for our baby’s room, our new house, cool maternity stuff and even a tattoo sleeve that I’m in love with. If you’re bored and want to check out my pins, click on the Pinterest link on the right hand side of this page and search for JoulesDellinger to find me.

Anyways, while tooling away on the website, I came across a framed image of “21 Suggestions for Success” by H. Jackson Brown, Jr. that really resonated with me. If you’re not familiar with his work, I wanted to share it with my fabulous Pocketful readers in case it sparks something with you too:

21 Suggestions for Success
By H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

  1. Marry the right person. This one decision will determine 90% of your happiness or misery.
  2. Work at something you enjoy and that’s worthy of your time and talent.
  3. Give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully.
  4. Become the most positive and enthusiastic person you know.
  5. Be forgiving of yourself and others.
  6. Be generous.
  7. Have a grateful heart.
  8. Persistence, persistence, persistence.
  9. Discipline yourself to save money on even the most modest salary.
  10. Treat everyone you meet like you want to be treated.
  11. Commit yourself to constant improvement.
  12. Commit yourself to quality.
  13. Understand that happiness is not based on possessions, power, prestige, but on relationships with people you love and respect.
  14. Be loyal.
  15. Be honest.
  16. Be a self-starter.
  17. Be decisive even if it means that you’ll sometimes be wrong.
  18. Stop blaming others. Take responsibility for every area of your life.
  19. Be bold and courageous. When you look back on your life, you’ll regret the things you didn’t do more than the ones you did.
  20. Take good care of those you love.
  21. Don’t do anything that wouldn’t make your mom proud.

I know some of them are pretty typical and you’ve heard them time and time again (and probably skim over them with your eyes half-closed). However, at this particular moment in time, I have four standout favorites: #3, #5, #11 and #13.

So on this Christmas Eve Eve, think about whether there is something on his list that you need to keep in mind. And if you happen to be that inevitable person who will be in line ahead of me tonight when I finish my holiday shopping…please, please, please take # 17 to heart!