Pictures and other stuff

Well, I’ll start with the good stuff first, and that is I’ve got three finishes to share!

“Tooth Fairy Pillow” by A Stitcher’s Hands, completed 10/25/08:

The second is “Blackstone Fantasy Garden” by Ink Circles, completed 11/21/08:

And finally, I did a quick ornament this year for Luke; I’m not sure when it will actually get turned into an ornament, but the stitching is finished at least. It’s “Snowdon” by Jemini Designs (from the 2008 JCS ornament issue), completed 11/22/08:

Here is a very belated picture of Luke from Halloween this year; he went as Indiana Jones:

And here’s his jack-o-lantern from this year; a ghost with a crown (his idea):

Finally, here is his rocket from the Cub Scout space derby:

Okay then, I think I’m caught up with pictures! Luke actually missed the space derby (the rocket race) because his dad took him skiing in Mammoth. They’re on their way back today; I hope they had a good trip!

In other news, the house fell through. It’s a long story, and after doing a considerable amount of market research, I expect it will turn out to be for the best. We have our place listed so we will still sell it and look for a bigger house, but after we sell our current place we may rent for awhile to ride out this whole market thing. It was going to be too risky to carry both mortgages, and we didn’t qualify for the same loan that we did when we put the offer in 11 weeks earlier. What they’re requiring these days is beyond ridiculous…but it manageable if we sell our place first. I understand there was a lot of bad sub-prime lending, and of course they need to tighten up the requirements, but they’ve gone so far the other way that it’s not going to help the market recover. In the meantime I guess we’ll be able to indulge in a few “extras” this winter, like a couple skiing trips. I’m disappointed, but I am trying to stay positive. I really don’t think we’ve seen the bottom of the market yet, so hopefully it will work out in the end.

Weekend, what weekend?

Gosh, what a busy weekend. It certainly wasn’t any sort of rest. The house is now clean enough and de-cluttered enough for our realtor to take photos today for our listing. Keeping it this level of clean and picked up may just kill me. Luke is leaving Wednesday night to go skiing with his dad, so we’ve scheduled our first open house for this weekend.

Pictures are still trapped in my camera. I did get a little time to stitch in the evenings, but it was pretty minimal. I started a new Christmas ornament for Luke; it’s the Jemini Designs otter ornament from this year’s JCS magazine. I managed to get a decent amount of exercise in also, which was great. Oh yes, and we finally watched the new Indiana Jones movie. Wow, what a disappointment. I mean, aliens? Really?! You’d think with 20 years (or whatever) between movies they really could have come up with a better plot. That’s an hour and a half (or so) that I’ll never get back!

Well, once we get pictures from our realtor I’ll post them as “after” remodel pics. And, of course, the packing continues…fun…not! I don’t often talk about all the moving I went through as a child, but I had counted it up once that I’d lived in 21 different places by the time I was 17. I vowed I wouldn’t do that to my kids, because it really sucked, so this next move is *it* until all kids are through high school. I wouldn’t mind retiring somewhere else, as I don’t really care for Southern California all that much. I’d love to live somewhere with greenery, and mountains, and a heck of a lot fewer people. For now, though, we’re in the Poway Unified School District and Luke has a lot of friends, and things are comfortable. The new house will be SO nice…can’t wait to have this move over so we can get settled and enjoy staying in one place!

Update

Thanks for all the congratulations comments! We’re pretty excited here about the house stuff. Escrow papers are in the mail so we should get them today or tomorrow. The original escrow company the seller planned to use (when we put the offer in almost 10 weeks ago now) has folded so they have chosen a different one. I’m very happy with their replacement company, because I know they are excellent from past experience.

We’ll be meeting with our realtor Sunday evening to discuss what we need to do to get our current place listed. I plan to spend my weekend cleaning up the house and getting miscellaneous stuff packed. We are supposed to close escrow on the new place the first week of December. The seller’s bank wants to close by the 28th, but they’re obviously drugs. We hadn’t scheduled an inspection yet since escrow still didn’t have the acceptance letter from the seller until *yesterday*. And, you know, the 28th is the day after Thanksgiving.  Had they truly wanted to close by then they should have gotten off their asses and accepted our offer weeks ago.

I have gotten a little time to stitch lately, though admittedly not much. I’m over 90% done with Blackstone Fantasy Garden, so hopefully I’ll have a finished pic to share soon. I spent my “free” time this week working on adopt-a-family stuff…everything is supposed to be collected the first week of December. Yeah, it’s going to be a busy time here!

So, life is good, but pretty swamped lately. I’ll try to free some pictures from my camera this weekend so I can post them…

New House!!

Well, we found out on Friday that the house we first put an offer on, 9 weeks ago today, has been accepted! We should get everything in writing today, including the date by which the seller’s bank wished to close escrow. I spent the weekend packing and getting our current home ready to list, when I wasn’t watching Luke play soccer. Saturday was the end-of-season tournament, so 3 hours at the soccer fields. They lost 2 games and won 1, so it wasn’t too bad.

Here’s a picture of the new house:

And here’s the link to the rest of the photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jillejones/sets/72157608816795445/

And the reason we went to look at this house in the first place was the kitchen:

Some of the pictures were from the original listing, and some are pictures we’ve taken when we’ve gone to see it. It’s pretty obvious which are which. Some of the ones we took are for the dining room chandelier, which will be one of the first things we plan to replace. No offense to any Capodimonte fans, but it’s just not “us”. Here ’s the lamp we plan to replace:

And here’s the one I want to buy to replace it with:

Aside from repainting some of the rooms upstairs (master bedroom, master bath, second bath, and the other bedrooms, eventually, unless Luke likes the paint that’s there), the only thing we really “have” to do is the backyard.

It’s going to be a busy month or two coming up, especially with the adopt-a-family program going on at the same time (I’m the PTA chair for the program), but I’m sure I’ll manage somehow! I expect I won’t get a lot of time to stitch for awhile, but I’ll survive somehow. I still have stitching pics to share, which are still trapped in my camera. I’m about 90% done with Ink Circles’ “Blackstone Fantasy Garden”, so what did I do last night? Did I work on it? No, because I started the first piece for the plastic canvas Christmas village that I’m going to make. Because, really, the thing I need to do *most* right now is start a new project…