Signed, Sealed, Delivered

So we are home-owners. After a short meeting at the title company offices today, we signed roughly 3,000 pieces of paper, and officially became home-owners. We collect the key later today from the sellers, and finally get to go in and get our hands dirty, so to speak. I can't wait to see the place all emptied out, and finally get all of these ideas out of our minds and onto the walls of our new house. Many more updates to come shortly. It feels SO good to be done with all of the boring, mind-numbing work, meeting, paperwork, phonecalls, etc. Its time to have some fun.

Relax

So, tomorrow is Wednesday, and the days continue to drop like flies as we move towards the weekend, and finally officially (kind of) closing on our house. Check out the pic above and you'll see our brand new Ottoman. We'd been searching tirelessly around KC for an Ottoman that would work with our furniture. We wanted something with that same Microfiber/Suede look that ours had, and with storage as well. We finally found this one online, and decided to go for it, because both of us were tired of looking at Ottomans. Anyway, a few simple screws on the tops, and it became part of our Living Room. Can't wait to put it into the new place, along with our new (old) Recliner.

Now to that new place. For the last month or so we've been building towards a September 1st closing date (the date originally suggested by our Lender.) I expressed to the Lender and to the Title Company the fact that September 1st is Monday, Labor Day, and everyone assured me it wouldn't be an issue. And wouldn't you know it, it IS an issue! But it appears we've got everything worked out now. We'll go in Friday to officially sign all of the documents, and the loan and settlement won't officially post until the next available day, which would be September 2nd. Luckily we're dealing with some very nice owners, and they have said that they have no issues getting us the keys once everything is a done deal and the documents are signed. Just another bit of stress and frustration to this final week, but we'll make it. We're waiting for official word that everything was great on the Appraisal (according to our Lender: "no news is good news") but the home-owners told us that things went great on Monday night with the Appraiser. Is it bad when we get more updates from the Home-Owners than from our Lender? I guess another one of the crutches of buying For-Sale-By-Owner without a real estate agent. But keeping that potential 3% commission sure is nice :)

The Final Countdown

Just one more week and we will have our house. Waiting through this month of August really hasn't been that bad. I thank Preseason Football starting to keep me occupied and from thinking about it all the time. We've got one room in our house quickly becoming the "stuff for the house" room, with boxes, bags, and random odds and ends everywhere. But now, just one more week. We shouldn't have any issues, and we'll have our fingers crossed that we won't run into any problems.

Bed of Roses

So I came upon our first awesome steal of what I hope is many while we're buying things for the new house. I went to meet my Mom and a friend to help them move something that they bought at a Home Decor place. After looking around the place, they asked if I wanted to run over to Bed, Bath, and Beyond with them before I went back home. I'm very glad that I did.

In addition to my Mom buying us an awesome Woodwick Candle, she also spotted something on the clearance rack -- that being the above King size Bedding set. I told her that we didn't really need a new bedding set, since ours was only about 1.5 years old, but I let her go ahead and check the clearance price anyway. Fully expecting to see at least 150 bucks, we were all a little blown away by what we saw:

Yes, that says "Was: 24.99....Now: 12.98". I was a little worried, because it was supposedly a Display model, and was listed "as is". But hell, it was 13 bucks, so even if I got it home and it had a big hole in it, it wouldn't be that big of a deal. My mom's friend Sue actually ended up buying it for me to thank me for coming and helping them with the artwork, so it was really a win/win for me. We all held our breath as we went to the check out, but sure enough, the clerk simply punched in the 12.98 price tag, and we were on our way (after the alarm went off because she forgot to remove the zipper lock on the bag. I was worried we were gonna lose it there.)

So I get it home, unpack it, and it looks perfect, aside from being wrinkly due to being bundled into a plastic wrapper for who knows how long. From the way it was packaged and folded, I really don't even think this was a floor model. Anyway, being the interested and savvy googler that I am, I typed in the full name of the bedding set to try and find out why it was so cheap. The first hit I got was for the Bed, Bath, and Beyond website. It looks like somebody messed up, just a little bit:

Wasting Time

So, not much to really blog about while we wait (and wait) for September 1st to come. Jamie has a nice excuse, since she's back in Western Kansas this weekend for some bachelorette/bridal shower festivities for her friend Angie, who is getting married in October. I'm still stuck here, thinking about the house, and all the stuff we're gonna do to it once we get in it. I guess the first 1/3 of the month went pretty fast....I guess.

So, here's a little look at our Anniversary gifts that we got each other this year. Our 4 year Anniversary was on June 26th, and I spent some time googling looking for ideas for gifts. I found out that the 4th anniversary traditionally has a gift of Fruit. Well, I was trying to think of something cool with Fruit, and found this great place called Edible Arrangements. They do all kinds of edible fruit bouquets for all occasions.

Unfortunately, Jamie thought of the exact same thing. 4th year. Fruit. Bouquet. The only difference is she is creative, and I'm lazy. I bought a giant fruit bouquet, and she made me a pretty awesome fruit bouquet of my own. She felt kind of bad that hers was so much smaller, but I told her that a) it cost alot less money, and b) had alot more thought into it. Regardless, both of them were awesome, and we had way too much fruit in the house for the next 2 or 3 weeks.

And no, we didn't even come close to eating all of it.

Freeze Frame

So like I mentioned, I might be stretching for content while we struggle through this last month on our way to September 1st. At least football starts, technically tomorrow with the Colts v Redskins opening preseason at the Hall of Fame game. Thank god for NFL Network and something silly like 55 preseason games.

Anyway, I put these posters together last night. Our awesome summer vacation to the Cabin in Grand Lake ended up taking us through Fort Collins, Colorado where we toured my personal favorite maker of beers -- New Belgium Brewery. As part of the tour you also got to sample 4 beers of your choice, which was cool, tasting some of their products that I'd only previously had in bottles. They had these awesome 12 v 16 posters available in the merchandise area, which I acquired at a discounted rate. I wasn't sure what I was gonna do with them, till Jamie suggested slapping them all into one big poster frame. I one-upped her and went with 2 awesome New Belgium posters, which will soon adorn the walls of the 3rd bedroom/den at our new house.