House Hunting

Last weekend we finally decided to pull the trigger and call a realtor. We have been discussing our need to move from this place we're in for quite some time. We love our apartment, but our floors are polished concrete and with Cecelia starting to move it won't work for much longer for us. We decided that it was time for us to look at buying our own home. So on Saturday night we had a realtor come by and meet with us. We chose the criteria most important to us - location and budget - and started to see what was available in that area. We were looking mostly at townhouses and condos close to the LRT stations.
Over the course of the week, we somehow started to take a look at single family homes. We have heard so much about what a waste of money it is to pay condo fees, and so on and so forth, and so we decided to branch out and get pre-approved for dollar number not including condo fees. With that number in mind I started to look at homes. I found one that seemed really wonderful. It was 6 bedrooms total (altthough the basement was basically unfinished, and 3 of them were down there), two bathrooms, an updates kitchen, plenty of space, in our current neighbourhood, and close to the LRT. It seemed perfect, so I went and took a look at it, and it really was. I got so excited about it, it was all I could talk about for a couple of days. I convinced Eric to go and take a look at it too, and then we were both in love. We came home though and started to work on the numbers...This was at the top of the number that we'd been approved for, and working on the figure, we just could not be comfortable with that number. It was too tight.
The rest of the week I just had this nagging feeling that this was our house though, and I couldn't shake it. I thought about it over and over, all day long. I tried and tried to come up with ways to make the numbers work in my mind. I finally called my mom and tried to talk it over with her. Being married to an accountant sometimes makes me feel that he has the final say in all our financial decisions. It makes me kind of feel like I don't carry much weight, but I just could not shake the feeling I had - something I knew would be hard for Eric to understand and take seriously. So I chatted with my mom for quite some time, and we finally developped a solid plan - we would put in an offer at a lower price, use the rest of the amount we'd been approved for to renovate, and create a second suite in the basement of the house. The house was perfect for it, and it was a great plan. I was so excited about it - I worked all afternoon that day on a sales pitch to my husband. (I even practiced it on my brother-in-law and his girlfriend.) When I got home (it was a Friday night) Cecelia was asleep and so I put her in bed and said to Eric "I really need to talk to you about something". Then I just laid it on him - all about how this was a risk, but I think it was worth it; this could be our chance to get ahead, when he's a bit afraid we'll always be behind; this was something that would be exciting and teach us so much and we really good for us and our family. He was actually sold. He had to mull it over in his mind for the evening and into Saturday morning (which was killing me), but he was pretty much convinced. I felt so good about the whole experience and was so ready to proceed - so excited about my new found courage and determination.
We took the idea over to Eric's dad - who is very logical and thorough in the planning stage of things - and asked for his advice. I said to Eric on the way over "can we please just take your dad's advice as advice, and not as absolute truth. We'll talk it over with him, but then the decision is ours to make." He agreed. Well, Trevor was just as sold as Eric - probably more. We chatted for a little while, and he said "let's go - you guys should put an offer in". We called our realtor to go see it one more time. We brought the whole family this time. Verona even did cart wheels in the living room - which is what I did in the first house my parents bought when I was little. I was so excited, and so at peace. This was our home.
We went home for Thanksgiving dinner with the family and decided we would write up the offer that night after dinner. That was a fun experience - writing up an offer on our first home. There was so much to go over, and so many details to consider. It was a good thing we had a realtor who understood it all there with us. It was very nerve wracking.
Then we got the call...an hour after he left we got the call that someone else had put an offer in right before us and it had been accepted. My heart sank - I was so upset and disappointed. How could that be? It felt so right. The house sat on the market for a couple of months, and was at the new price for 25 days before we got to it. Then all of a sudden someone decided on the same day as us that it was their house - and it couldn't be ours anymore.
We decided to negotiate a back-up offer in case that one fell through at the conditions stage. We went back and forth for a little while, bu the seller just wouldn't budge on her numbers. We wouldn't have been able to afford it at that price anyway, so I guess it just wasn't going to happen for us.
I spent that night and the next day feeling like this was still our house - something was going to happen - some miracle. But it didn't - and it probably won't - and that's okay. We were fasting for this, and so was our family, but this was someone else's turn to find their dream home instead. We will just have to keep looking for ours.
This was not a wasted pursuit though - I learned a lot about myself and about my feelings and about trying to communicate and share those with my husband. This little adventure brought us closer together and strengthened our relationship - and that is nothing to be disappointed about.

The Incident

Saturday was a nice slow and realxing day that we all got to spend together until...
We put a bottle on the stove in a pot of water to heat it up for Cecelia before we left the house, then we left for the mall. Maybe an hour later I grabbed Eric's arm and said "I forgot to take the bottle off the stove!". He ran home as fast as he could and left Cecelia and I at the mall. He left his cell phone at home so I waited patiently at the mall while he figured it all out. He finally calls me from home and it's all loud and fuzzy and he says "Sorry I'll call you back, Neil is here and I have to tell explain to him why the fire department is here! Everything's fine though."
Apparently explaining to the landlord why the fire department is at our house is more important than explaining to your wife why the fire department is at our house.
It turns out everything really was fine though. They pumped the house full of carbon monoxide and aired it out and all that's left of the incident is half a baby bottle in a ruined pot and the smell of smoke. The smell of smoke seems to want to hold on for quite some time, but other than that everything is just fine and safe.

Tour of our home - the fall edition

Outside my window looks like this right now...

 ...and it has me listening to Christmas music this afternoon. I am anxious to get through November to my birthday, because after that is when I have allowed myself to decorate for Christmas.
I am enjoying fall and Thanksgiving and Halloween things too though. It's been a really nice fall here, with only a few gloomy days and more than our fair share of warm ones. Yesterday for example was almost 20 degrees! Then this today. Go figure.
I thought I should grab some shots of the things I've done around the house for fall, before it all comes tearing down to make room for the red and the green.

I love our chalkboard that my husband picked out and spray painted for me.

This is my favourite spot in the whole house. So comfy and so cozy. I need a good blanket to go with it.

Another favourite spot.

And another.

This blanket was meant to be a permanent addition to the bedroom, but the longer we have it in there the more we realise it is indeed orange, not red as I originally argued. I think it has become a fall blanket, and we will be much more careful when choosing our next one, or our duvet cover.  Maybe white or grey would be a better idea.

Our bedroom is sad and needs help. It is very bare, but we are enjoying the new furniture from Ikea and the space that we were so fortunate to find here in Calgary.

This is home for us! We are really loving the apartment, and even more so now that it is our own. We were so lucky to find such a good place, and just as we hoped for those 3 months of searching, the time we took and the persistent pickiness have paid off for us.

It's coming together

Our little house is finally starting to feel like a home. I spent much of Eric's week away getting things done around here and making it feel like our own. I have always wanted a beautiful home, as well as a peaceful home. It's a big goal of mine to have somewhere I am able to invite people to spend time, and most importantly where people are comfortable spending time. I want my home to be a refuge from the world, and a place where people know they are loved and appreciated - everyone from our family to friends, and our kids to friends of our kids someday. Now, I do realise that decorations are not what makes a house a home in the way I just described, but I have been trying to make it our own place and to make the space organized and usable. Those things do matter I think. It's hard to feel comfortable at peace in a messy and/or dirty home. Getting projects done and photos on the wall is a start.
I am so so excited to present my favourite project - which I am not allowed to call our baby anymore.  I saw this on Pinterest of course, and instantly needed to have it in my house. It has taken it's sweet time (from Home Depot to our shed, to our living room, to my in-laws place and back again, and up in the wall in three shifts), but it is finally coming together and I could not be happier with it.

One of Eric's friends was over and paid the best compliment I could have asked for with our new projects coming together. He said our home made him feel like he wanted to sit down and read a book, kind of like a Chapters. Now I know that seems a bit silly, but I love Chapters. It is where I go when I need an instant shot of creative inspiration and brain stimulation. That's kind of the idea I am going for. I want it to be cozy and warm and soft and comfortable - I want you to feel like you want to read a book when you come to our home. Thanks Jordan!

We Bought A Couch

Remember when I told you that we've been shopping for furniture as a hobby for a couple of months now? Well lately it's started to get really old, because now we live in our new place and the couch we have is embarrassing. You have no idea how many of these photos we've gone through..."Yea we found the couch we actually want now, and we'll probably buy it in the next couple of days."

But here it really is...the one. We actually spent the money on this one today, so it's written in stone.

This is the couch. We swore the whole time we were searching that we would not get leather, but I fell in love with this one as soon as I saw it.
We went in there on Saturday (for the 3rd time) ready to order it in a fabric we chose, and then the girl finally told us that it wouldn't work in fabric. One of the main reasons we love it - the fact that it's just a bench seat and not cushions - means that the fabric would wear out too fast and leather would be a much better option. I couldn't find any leather colours I liked though, and that put it way out of our budget (instead of just a little bit). Then she showed us this one. The leather was discontinued and so it was a floor model they were trying to get rid of for a while. She was able to give us a really good deal, but it was still a bit too expensive, so we told her we had to think about it. We thought about it all weekend, and then decided it was definitely what we wanted, and so we called today and put the money on it.
The main thing that made us choose this couch though is the matching chair and a half. I wanted a chair and a half really really bad, and we couldn't find nice ones anywhere. Seriously, name one furniture store you know in Calgary and I guarantee we looked there for one. But this one I love. Because we bought the couch in this leather, it the fabric we originally chose for the chair didn't match. But something even better happened. Eric said he wanted a patterned one. WHAT? I did not see that coming in any way. He wanted the pattern on the floor, because it looked really good with the leather on the floor. He wanted our living room to look just like that one. So we ordered the chair in a great pattern that I am so so excited for.
We get to pick up the couch anytime, but the chair is a special order so it's going to take 4-6 weeks to come in! I can't wait, I am so exicted! And since I have to wait that long to see the finished product, so do you! Just wait til yous see this pattern...it's fabulous!

We Got It!

We heard back from our new landlord to be tonight, and he picked us for that apartment we love! I am really excited to move in and to start a new chapter, but mostly right now I am excited to not have to check the RentFaster app on my phone or send anymore emails or make anymore phone calls tomorrow at lunch. I am so excited that will soon have our own home, and that it's the one we really want to live in.

Fingers Crossed - we found an apartment!

Tonight we looked at two basement suites we loved. We've learned our lesson though on not acting fast enough, so we weren't going to make that mistake again.
The first we saw was pretty nice. There were some things we liked, some things we didn't, but the pros for sure out weighed the cons. The location was exactly what we wanted. A close walk to the C-Train station for Eric, and just south of downtown. After seeing this one, we had our minds made up: that was where we wanted to live. So we told the guy it was great, but he was just a friend showing it for the landlord so we had to contact him. I tried to give him a call, but no answer so we filled out the paperwork to send in right away.
We were on our way to the second showing tonight when we hit a bunch of traffic. We were running late, and this one really wasn't in a spot we wanted to live anyway, it was just to keep our options open. So I called the guy, told him the situation, and he said it was fine, he would wait for us. So I thought, he seems nice, and the pictures of the place itself seemed nice, and it was on the way home. It couldn't hurt. Well it did. It hurt us big time, because this was by far the nicest place we've seen yet! It was spacious and clean and modern. It had great big windows and tons of natural light. It was not at all like a normal basement suite. Eric stood and talked to the landlord for a long time about all the renovations he'd done, and I talked with the current tenant for a long time about her time living here and how much she enjoyed it.
Now we had a decision to make. Do you want the pretty nice apartment with the perfect location, or the perfect apartment with the okay location? This is always the question. Eric asked me which I preferred, and I said to him "I can't answer that", he asked why, and I said "because I liked that one, but I'm the one who gets the car, and your the one who has to make your way to school somehow." That was the tricky part. The nearest station was at least a 15 minute walk. The other one was so convenient, and it really seemed perfect - until we saw the second one. Eric agreed though, and said he thought we really could call that second one home - he felt like it was the one we'd been holding out for.
We called the landlord as soon as we got home. I felt awkward bugging him so soon, but Eric didn't, and we couldn't let another one go by like that. So Eric sold us to him, but he still had one more couple to see it, and he couldn't make any decisions until the mortgage for the woman moving our was finalized.
We've decided to wait. This is a huge leap of faith for us, given all the experiences we've had recently with waiting, but we're doing it. This is the one we want, and it's the one we're going to try for. We should know by Friday, but that seems like a million days away, not 2. Fingers crossed for us please! I hope we've found our new home.

Mortgages

So after all the unsuccessful searching we've been doing, we had an interesting chat this past week with Eric's dad. He's almost done his mortgage and a guy in the ward who's a real estate agent told him about a great condo he has for sale at the end of the month. Trevor started to think about it, and then he sat with us and suggested we really start to think about it. That caught us a little off guard, but we did. We started to think about owning our own place. We crunched some numbers and downloaded the real estate ap and got excited about it - but not too excited, just the right amount. Tonight we met with a mortgage broker. It was a really fun experience and I think we both learned a lot.
In the end it didn't all work out that way. We and he decided it was a bit early, and that there was really no need to rush in to something huge like this right away. It's a bit frustrating to get back to apartment hunting, but this was a really good experience and definitely worth our time. It's closer than we thought, but just not quite yet.

We are still here

I the basement of Eric's parents' place that is. I've taken to calling it the dungeon, which I admit is probably not productive, but it's starting to feel that way a bit.It's cold and dark in the winter for one thing (and in the summer too actually). We don't expect to be out before February 1st for sure, and it sometimes sees it will be much later than that. We have the Kijiji and Rent Faster aps on our phones and I for one am addicted to checking them. It takes a long time to find one we like and when we do, we never hear back from them and can only assume it's gone already. It's really tough because it feels like we're doing all we can, but are still waiting. We can just have faith that it will all somehow work out and come together for our good in the end.

Furniture Shopping

We've developed a new hobby. A couple of weeks ago we had some friends get a new couch at a store that was closing. We decided to drop by and see what was going on at this store. Thus began a very enjoyable and very consuming adventure. We've been all over now, and we love shopping for furniture.
We've tossed around a few ideas for things we should buy - everything from a new mattress, to a dining set, to couches...it goes on and on.
We're waiting now for our Future Shop gift cards to come in the mail so that we can buy a new TV. Eric has been saving his Visa points for a long time - many semesters of school paid for, flights booked, and everything else that adds up everyday, later we can actually afford to redeem them for something exciting. It was fun to use them to treat ourselves to something we normally wouldn't have splurged for. I can tell that Eric is very excited about it.