Saturday, January 31, 2009

Staging

I'm keeping busy this month with trying to get my home ready to sell. All the decluttering, cleaning and staging of the house was suppose to be done by today, but that goal has been wisely pushed back. :-) We still have a ton to do to make our house look presentable.

Thanks to my Mom & Dad, we got drapes for the living room & dining room. My Mom also spent a lot of time making pillows for our window seat while she was here.


Then I continued to keep her busy, making my children scripture bags. They all look so cute, that if I hadn't picked them out myself I wouldn't have imagine that they are made out of place mats.

Brad's Mom and Bryan were also very giving. We got new bedding for our children's beds and new furniture for Seija's room. Although as you can plainly see we still haven't gotten the missing piece for Seija's bed. Poor girl is still sleeping on the floor.


So far, some of the big changes we've made in organizing our furniture are: 1. The boys room is now just Matthias' room,

2. The TV room is now Caleb's room,

3. The formal dining area (which was empty) is now our music area, and

4. The living room is also our TV room.


I've also finished decluttering Caleb's room, Matthias' room, Seija's room, our room, the living room, dining room, kitchen, and bathrooms. I just have the office (which will be a huge progect), the pantry area and bit more of the garage left to do.

Not only have we been organizing our space, we've also been decorating each room to stage it for selling. Staging the house has been my favorite part of this whole thing. I have many projects in the works which I will post as I complete them, but here are some things that are finished.

Our bathroom linens/decor are now in the main bathroom.

Our bathroom got new tiling and than some new decor. I reused a basket I got for Christmas to make the hand towels look nicer.

I made a centerpiece for our coffee table that actually matches the colours of our couch. Since it is an ugly, odd coloured couch I was impressed to find the bowl/decorative balls (thank-you WalMart).

I also made a centerpiece to go with the colour of the drapes in our Kitchen.

I keep hoping to find more time to blog, but life continues to get busier instead.
If any of you know someone wanting to buy a home in San Antonio, give us a call!

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

I Speak Canadian

This is just a random post, to help me get back into the blogging world (I really, truly hope!!!).

Throughout the years we've lived here, there have been times I feel like I speak a completely different language. I would say something, then I get these blank stares, so I repeat myself. Then still have people staring saying things like "What are you talking about?".

You'd think after 2 1/2 years, I'd have picked up on all the different Canadian English / US English words. But just in this last week I've had two such experiences.

A group of us were discussing a snack for an activity. I suggested something easy like rippled chips and dip. Then came those blank stares, and after a long pause, the question. "Is that kinda like Lays?" Well, I wanted to make it clear that it wasn't any flavour of chips - Lays has many varieties - because the flavoured ones don't go so well with a dip. "No, it's the plain chips with the ripples. You don't call them ripple chips?"

Apparently they are just called Lays (or Ruffles).

So last night as I was grocery shopping, I bought a bag of ripple - Lays, ruffles, crinkle cut, wavy, ridged, whatever you want to call it - chips, Walmart's Great Value product, and what are they called!?! You guessed it...

Ripple cut chips!!!



Then tonight, as I was researching some furniture prices. All I could find were store, after store, after store (after store) with prices shown in Euros. Surely there are stores in the USA that sell this! So I went to the Ikea store, because they have good prices, and there they were. Tons of bedside tables with USD prices. So why was my google search only showing up with Euros????

I figured it out! It took longer than it probably should have (but it's late, I have a good excuse). Bedside tables are not called bedside tables - go figure. They are called night stands. I was just trying to throw myself off a little by looking up Ikea first. Of course they would call them bedside tables!