Moving Stats

If you came by for the giveaway, you'll find it here.

Hi hi hi! Thank you all so much for the well wishes. I can use all the help to get the house sold. And thank you on the love re: CK Dream Team. It's really an honor!

A few of you had questions about my move, and I thought I'd answer them here, since Blogger doesn't not allow me to email you directly.

Where: 2,720 miles away. Los Angeles. We've lived there before, so it's not entirely foreign. But it's been a while.

When: have no idea!

Stagers: I hired a stager recommended by my realtor. She came and basically told me what I already knew: pack up a lot of our belongings, put them in storage. Then a few days later, she came back with two movers, and they rearranged all my furniture, lamps, pictures, etc. The guys would move a sofa, and the stager would go, "Can you move that an inch and a half to the left?" Totally what I'd do, if I had someone else doing the heavy lifting. I may have found my next job. As a stager. Not a mover.

What else we did: painted all the red away (boo hoo), refinished the bathroom walls and tub (a guy came and sprayed the 60s out of them, it's all white and so beautiful now), put in new medicine cabinets, organized every closet in the house (thank goodness old houses have small closets), cleaned every nook and cranny, Magic Erased the remaining walls within an inch of their lives (note to self: buy stock in whatever company makes those), and the evilest thing of all: made the kids pack 99% of their Legos away.

Remember that photo of my dining room being painted?

Now, it looks like this:

(photo taken by Judy Petersen)

Not my thing, but hey, if it will sell the house... And yes, Marie, you can quote me on your crusade against stainless steel appliances.

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Cyber Tuesday Giveaway

The house officially went on the market yesterday. Phew. Got the house ready in one and a half weeks. I think that's pretty dang good. (Don't look too closely around the basement, though.)

Some photos from the past week-ish.

One of things about staging a house that bums me out is doing away with personal choices. Apparently Ralph Lauren's Hunting Coat Red is a bit much for some people. So, goodbye red. Hello beige, er, I mean Navajo White.

A quick visit to biggest's Science class. Experimenting with pH. Nothing melted + nothing exploded = a good day.

There used to be a very ugly medicine cabinet in that hole. And a very ugly light fixture above it. In a very ugly yellow bathroom. That's all gone now.

We also made some time to goof off and eat at Cheeburger Cheeburger. Funny that we missed In-N-Out so much when we moved here. And now, we'll miss Cheeburger.

Making Michael Ruhlman's lemon bars. When I read that post the very first time, Ruhlman mentioned that his fourth grader could make the dessert, so I put my then fourth grader to the test. And yes, they were that easy. This time around, my pro-lemon-bar-making-chef sixth grader mentored his fourth grader brother. The lemon bars were amazing. Make some today!

And lastly, GIVEAWAY! The scoopage: several very kind and generous manufacturers sent the CK Dream Team huge amounts of scrapbook goodies. It's been like Christmas every other day. Alas, I'm only one person and I can't use it all (plus I'm afraid a potential house buyer will open my craft closet and think I have a serious shopping addiction, which I may or may not have, but I'm not going to talk about it today.) So I'm sharing my bounty with you! I've filled two USPS Priority boxes with stuff. Tons of stuff. They are packed to the very top. It's totally random, so please forgive me. I should have taken photos of the content, but uh, I didn't think about that until they were filled, and then I was too lazy to take it all out. But as you can kinda see, there are: mists, Thickers, adhesives, tons of patterned papers, bling-y things, stickers, chipboard, the works. New stuff. You are going to like this.

I have two boxes for two lucky people. You have until next Tuesday, December 7 to leave me a comment. Sorry, dear friends living in other countries, these are heavy suckers, so I can't send them abroad. Please check back on Wednesday to see if you are a winner.

With that said, I gotta go polish my appliances. I'll never buy stainless steel stuff again.

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EightiesTurkeyPainting

Hello hello! I didn't do a Weekend In Photos this weekend. Sorry. Alas, I didn't break out my phone camera once. The reason is that we are moving to Los Angeles. The realtors came over, freaked out over our house (which I took as sign that they loved it. I hope.) and want to put it up for sale immediately. Which means, I've spent the past few days running around like a headless chicken (and looking that poorly also.) And will continue to run around headless for a few more weeks.

It's been chaotic and nerve-jangling.

But life moves on. And yesterday, as I was getting the littlest ready for school, I realized we had forgotten to make his turkey project, due, uh, yesterday (of course.) Luckily, middlest was home and he's a crafty one (in more than one way!) So the three of us worked together and made this adorable gobbler. We got to school and found out that we were the only people who remembered to turn in the project. So typical.

After everyone got home, we went to IKEA to get some decorative stuff for staging the house. And of course, the kids wanted to eat some meatballsgravylingonberrysaucemashedpotatoes. I'm so glad we did eat there, because this girl dressed up in the best 80s outfit showed up. Yes, I shot a photo. It needed to be recorded and shared. Tight, shiny red pants. Baggy  purple shirt with huge shoulder pads. High tops. And a headband! Priceless. I was in awe and love with the getup. I miss the 80s.

So I leave you with those lovely images, and I'm off to do more work on the house. I probably won't be here much for the next week or so, but I do have lots of scrappy goodies to giveaway when I return. So see you soon.

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