House Decoration and Celebration

So, as we still have plenty of stuff at my parent's house to get moved, we're officially living, successfully, I think, in our new house. We had a little celebration this weekend and, even though we weren't expecting gifts, we received a few really cute things.


Pictures:

This was given to us by my friend since kindergarten! Love it! We decided it should be hung above the pantry!

A super awesome gift card, non-alcoholic beverage for me, and wine for Brandon!

Scotch for Brandon and a non-alcoholic option for me!

Isn't this clock pretty?! I can't wait to hang it!

Our welcoming buddy from my mom!

We actually got 2 more gift cards, one to Lowe's from a work friend of Brandon's and one to Home Depot from Anne...but the Home Depot one is highlighted on my baby blog with another type of gift.

This is a little lawn windmill ornament my mom got for us. Brandon picked the perfect place for it!

Here are the pictures of the house with stuff in it, looking a tad less bare:

What will be our dining room, but was our "sitting room" for the party. That is my Mawmaw's card table and chairs we borrowed. It was a popular place, lol.

The kitchen (after clean up, actually). The red vases with small roses and white flowers at the base were decorations at my wedding and the large vase with an arrangement was a decoration used at my nursing school pinning ceremony. I think it looks nice until we feel like spending more money on decorations more specific to our rooms.

Our new couches! They all recline and are super comfortable! We're thinking we want a decorative mirror above the fireplace, but, since I scored an awesome deal via MamaPedia or GroupOn  (I don't remember which) for a canvas photo, I just placed our wedding canvas picture there until we hang it elsewhere. My nursing figurine and Brandon's police figurine are there, too, with empty glass photo frames we'll fill in the future.

Also, the little candle sticks and candles around the fireplace was given to us by my Grandmommy. They're a nice little touch to the living room.

This is the view of our office from the hallway. We had to add the fan because it gets so warm in this room.

This is the office from the corner. That is my shelf all set up. Brandon is still working on his. 

This is our front porch. We got some simple, but cute, lawn chairs and table, complete with citronella candle. It is summer in Texas! 

Still very bare, but our spare bedroom. The bed is ready for visitors! Only I forgot to grab a mattress pad for it. I, personally, hate sleeping on beds without mattress pads...but maybe that is only my problem. Who knows.

The spare bathroom. We wanted a cute, simple shower curtain that would go with the paint already there, but be both adult and kid friendly at the same time. I think we did alright!

I can't remember if I showed off our new laundry room. Aren't they pretty?!

Our bedroom. I swear it looks bigger with our crap in it than with the previous owner's stuff. We don't have a headboard set for the bed yet, but, with some purchases from Ikea, we at least have places to put our things.

Our new bed. Sorry, I did not make the bed for the picture, but I don't care. Hope you don't. We just need a bed skirt for it, really. And some bedside lamps in the future. But our bedroom light fades to the dimness we like and is within reach of our bed...so we're good for now.

This was what happens when you leave the dogs for too long and DVDs within dog reach. Obviously, before our new couches were delivered.

And what happens if you don't get the bedroom door shut in time. They look so comfy, though.

That's all for today! My brother's graduation photos came in, too, and he's handsome in them. But they're just posed things. The pictures I managed to take sucked (too far away with a camera that just isn't capable of a zoom like that) so I won't have any to post.

Oh, and my cousin who sells Arbonne just sent me some things to try out! I'm super excited to play with some of it (and some will have to wait since it's for baby, and, well, that will be October or November!). But I'll let ya' know how it goes!

We Have the Keys!

Finally! Yay!


So, we did the walk through on Monday night for official measurements and colors and such. The sellers had called us and said they'd be out Monday night and we could just get the keys that night. Yay! Thus, we spent ALL DAY Monday shopping for things for the house! And, oh my, did we spend some money!


Mom came with us, and, thank God we're frugal and don't mind pricing stuff. I was actually very proud of us. We went to Best Buy, Home Depot, Fry's, Sear's Outlet, and Conn's, and never drove out of our way! We just started at one point, and went on down the highway towards our house and stopped at all the locations on the way. It was quite perfect. Mom was ready to buy everything at Best Buy, our first stop, of course. Home Depot we weren't that crazy about. We didn't make a Lowe's stop, but I'm not going to cry over that at all. Fry's had some good deals, but, ultimately, we found better deals. (honestly, the fridge we found at Fry's kicked everyone's butts, but, we just bought everything from one store in the end.) Sear's Outlet was cool, and we seriously considered a few things there, but ended up purchasing the whole shabang at Conn's.


What did we get? A super awesome deal on a steam washer and steam dryer, energy efficient front loaders, and the pedestals FREE!  That saves around $500 alone. The fridge was pretty cool. Nothing special, but just a good price (which we found good prices many places.) We bought a memory foam king size bed and frame. We'll worry about a bedroom set at some later date, but, oh wow, that bed was comfy. We also splurged on an open item (was a floor model, I believe)...a new tv. It is very nice. It is 3D ready (which I really didn't care about, but, hey, can't hurt!), has 16 speakers embedded in the tv itself, and wireless sound. The sales-guy knew Brandon already from previous interactions regarding Brandon's job, and he really did us a good one on a a nice price on a wireless sub-woofer to go with the tv. All of Conn's could hear the sweet sound coming from our tv and new sub. Pictures of those to come at a later date, as we're currently awaiting their delivery.


But, here are some raw pictures of the house!

The light fixture in the "office."

The "office."

TV nook and fireplace.

Dining area.

View of the master closet from the bathroom.

The back corner of the master closet.

Master tub and sinks.

2nd bath (there is a closet behind the door!).

Most likely to be Baby's room, just needs a ceiling fan.

Spare bedroom.

Kitchen with almost nothing in it.

View of living area from kitchen.

Garage. No idea why the ceiling is blue.

Laundry room, as seen from the garage. See the extra storage closet on the right?

Another view of the dining area.

Master bedroom.

Front yard as seen from the front porch.

Front porch. Just needs some cute chairs!

Brandon has already started the process of moving some of our junk to the new house. Thursday, when I get off work, we'll load up a lot more to take out there to wait for Verizon to show up to set up our cable and internet. We'll probably stay the night, Thursday night, after watching the Mavericks game on our new tv and speaker! 


Oh! I almost forgot! My mom totally surprised me and bought us living room furniture! She bought us a couch, love seat, and recliner! It will be delivered at the beginning of June, so we will have to use an old couch of Brandon's in the mean time, but, wow!


Here is a crappy iPhone picture of it from the store. The love seat and couch, both, recline, too!

We will be having a house warming party, but I'm sure I'll have more pictures to post later and things settle in some!

And, don't forget to check the baby blog if you wanna see a random update. :)

And the house is ours!

All signed and paid up! (well, the down payment, that is)


Sorry, no new pictures right now. We gave them a 7 day lease back, so they have until midnight on the 18th of this month to pass the keys over. We're sorta hoping for sooner than that, but, whatever, we're not ready to move just yet. But, I'm trying to get a walk-through set up so we can get measurements on the size of the fridge and confirm the measurements sent to me on the utility room. Mom is wondering if the bathrooms have colors already that would require coordination (I honestly can't remember, though I'm leaning towards no).


It went very smooth! Brandon had a class that day so he was in a hurry. The title company had already emailed us all the paper work we'd be signing so we had plenty of time to read it before we signed (so we didn't turn out like the South Park episode).

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As soon as we were done signing, Brandon headed back to class and I stayed behind to ask any questions and finish everything. I almost completely forgot to pay because we were all chatting and things (turns out the lady at the title company lives around the corner from our new house). She laughed about it and I explained how I would gladly hand over the money because, as it had to be in a cashier's check, I was scared of losing it and losing all that money! Because as soon as the cashier's check was cut, the money was taken out of our account. All I could imagine was LOSING that check and LOSING that much money. Thank God I only had the check for a few days before we handed it over, and stored in a safe place. I would've gone crazy if it was ready longer than that.


Also, the title lady gave a huge compliment to our loan guy because she said in almost 8 months, she'd never received completed paperwork all in line as fast as his company got it to them! Yay for great workers!


Now...we wait, lol. That's like all we ever do...but, alas, we wait. We're hoping the sellers will give us a call before long to give us a heads up when they'll actually be vacating and turning off their utilities so we can get our utilities set up/transferred to decrease a lapse. If they don't, we probably won't have anything turned on until after we get back from my brother's medical school graduation, but still, would be nice to have the heads up.


I'm so excited and still really nervous! This was such a big event!


And I put up a new post on my baby blog. Clicky to the post if you're interested!

Vegas!

Ahh! We had a good time!


To start, any of you who have met my husband may or may not know he's a worry wart. Sometimes, you can't tell, but I can. As it got closer to our departure date, he become more and more obsessed (yes, that is the absolute RIGHT word) with the fact that it was supposed to rain on Sunday, the day we were to fly out to Vegas. He had me call and see if we could move our flight up a bit in the day (but that would have cost too much) and fretted all day. He seriously made himself sick. Well, we did have a delay due to weather, but it was very lame. We took off an hour and fifteen minutes late and arrived not that much later than planned (the pilot said we were re-routed and that actually we were able to shorten the flight). And the only reason we were delayed is some runways were closed due to rain...but not ours. Everything just got backed up because all the other planes were having to use our runways, so we had to wait our turn. It was actually a pretty smooth flight, I got to lay down on the empty seat next to me (I fell asleep and woke myself up by jerking awake...plane sleeping is NOT normal), and mostly watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 on the ride. (hooray for free digital copies)


When we got here, we came straight to the hotel to get checked in. Our last experience with hotels was better than this one. It's a nice hotel, but, jeeze, they follow really stupid rules. When you make your reservation, you click if you want a king suite or a double suite (would be 2 queen beds). We want a king bed! Duh! As we were checking in, the lady behind the desk (whose English was rough and neither of us could quite understand her) said all that was available (she's sorry) were double queen rooms. We actually had already overheard this with another couple (who, incidentally, was offered a smoking King room and I guess took it since we weren't) so we were ready to argue. Because, really, why bother being able to say you want to reserve a certain bed if you're not actually going to follow through with the reservations, stupid hotel. She explained that reservations promise a room, but not the type of room, or something like that. I don't care if it makes sense to hotels or not, we were perturbed, to say the least. So, Brandon argued. She said she was going to talk to her manager, and like FIVE MINUTES LATER came out saying that she got us our room. WHAT?! So all that hoopla about not having a king room was just because they were hoarding it? It's a basic level room...so who is so special that planned customers were going to get gipped just because they didn't want to give out the room? I don't care, because we got it. But that set the precedent for the hotel.

This was our receiving area or whatever you wanna call it. I didn't take a picture of the bedroom area because it was unmade by this point! lol But its about the same size with a king sized bed and armoire instead of couch, chairs, and tv.

It was nice...but nothing uh-mazing. And, weirdly enough, was full of static charges! Our room was the worst and I blame the carpet. It didn't matter what shoes we were wearing, we got shocked all the time. But, even downstairs walking around the Lobby, we got shocked, too. That was a bit annoying because I've never stayed anywhere where I was shocked by static so much!


The food was good. We actually got very tired of eating out all the time. Nothing can be just plain simple in Vegas and I found myself missing some boring fast food or plain pizza or whatnot. But we did eat at Mario Batali's Italian steakhouse called Carnevino at the Palazzo. THAT was UH-MAZING. The steaks were perfection, the calamari we had was done exactly right, and the pasta was yummy. This was one of my sad points that I'm not drinking alcohol because a glass of wine with that dinner would have just topped it all off nicely.


We also stopped at a place called The Burger Bar. The burgers were good, but their milkshakes were wonderful! They also had alcoholic shakes, which Brandon did not try, but here is my shake, called the Black and White. It was cookie dough ice cream with cookie chunks and chocolate chips in it, topped with chocolate icing, chocolate syrup, and chocolate chips. Yum!

We walked around a lot, looking at the different hotels and such. The Bellagio has a butterfly habitat and they changed it since the last time we were there. The area is full of beautiful flowers, and especially tulips this time around, but this time, instead of a huge net with butterflies just wherever they want to be, they reduced it to a a green house area and had feeding stations for the butterflies.

 

Left is the hotel New York, New York, and right is a closer picture of New York, New York's Statue of Liberty. 

The MGM Grand Lion in the background...

Eiffel tower of the Paris hotel.

At the Bellagio in front of the fountains, staring at the Paris hotel.

We usually don't do shows. We like to spend our money on expensive restaurants, like Mario Batali's, and, this time around, were cognizant that the more we took home, the easier it would be to buy things for the new house. (CLOSING IS THIS WEEK OMG!) But we visited the Shark Reef Aquarium at Mandalay Bay. My pictures of the sharks came out pretty crappy because they swim too fast for the shutter speed on my little camera. (remember my wish list for a new camera? ya, still want it!) Either way, I'll share what I can.

Left (crappy pic, sorry, but he wouldn't cooperate) is an alligator. Right is a komodo dragon!

Left: pirahnas! Right: shark!

Left: Tropical fish eating broccoli. Right: sting rays

Jellyfish!

Left: petable stingray. Right: more sharks

Sorry for the darkness...but they didn't have lights in this area of the tanks. This is a ray shark. He's so weird!

Oh, and the lion habitat at the MGM Grand is free (mostly because it's just the 3 lions who are super cute hanging out in their habitat). The overhead informational said that lions often sleep upwards of 20 hours a day (my kind of life), but we were lucky they were awake and playing around when we went by the first time. The day we left we saw them snoozing and OH MY GOSH are they cute sleepers!

We saw Pete Rose...but didn't get in line to meet him.

We did well gambling. Wait, let me rephrase. Brandon did well gambling...I lost money most of the time lol. By the end of the trip, I would play with less money when he would play with more. We only played on machines, and, a few times, his machine would just start dinging a lot (it was counting all the "credits" he won, which translates into cash). I would ask him what he did, and his usual response was, first, "I don't know," then, "Oh, I only won like $10," and finally, "Kim, I won more than $10." Ya, he won a lot more than stupid $10. He asked why I was always mad that he was winning, because I would get mad at him, lol. My answer? Because you keep saying you didn't win anything!!! Also, because it sucks that I never got to be the one who hit some jackpot. I mean, if you sit down and press the slot machine FOUR TIMES and win $500, you SUCK! Thank you very much. But we had lots of fun.


I'll leave it at that. I'm sure it was long enough, but at least there are pictures. Next big event...CLOSING! But, I doubt there will be tons to post about since I believe there is a lease back to the sellers and we won't get the house for another week after closing...but either way, it's a big day coming up!


Also, I posted some new gibberish on Along Comes a Minion, if you're interested!