So sparkly...

Being that I'm fairly tomboyish in my presentation to the world, some of you out there may be unaware of my deep and abiding love of sparkly things. For instance, I absolutely love jewelry. My laziness usually overrides my ambition in regards to coordinating accessories with my outfit, so my jewelry collection is largely unseen by the public... but I have lots of fun, shiny pieces. The reason I'm mentioning this is to put the light fixture you're about to see into some context.

I love crystal chandeliers. I was determined to have one in our new house. However, perhaps contrary to my reputation, I am not a design dictator. I wanted to get some ceiling bling that took Steve's more minimalist preferences into account. To that end, this arrived in the mail today:

It's small and simple (for a chandelier) and of course faux-crystal to make it affordable. I think it's awesome (I feel the picture doesn't really do it justice), and it will remain hanging from our coat rack for me to enjoy until it can be installed in its permanent home in our brand new bedroom.

Before

Steve and I have been hard at work with little projects around our new house. None of it looks interesting enough to make the blog yet, so I'll just share a "before" video that I shot this past weekend. The video file had to be reduced quite a bit to be a reasonable size, so please forgive the less than perfect quality.

As an aside, I haven't heard my voice recorded many times before and I feel that I sound really strange. Steve says that's how I usually sound. Weird. Anyway...

Our contractor will start her work after labor day. She expects work to take 3-4 weeks. Steve and I plan to keep our rental through October to allow for project delays.

For the time being, we'll be fighting the good fight against the foliage explosion.

VICTORY IS OURS! (updated)

Escrow closed today, the house is ours. More to come soon.

Update #1:
Our realtor went to the house to retrieve the keys from the lockbox and in a totally unsurprising turn of events given everything that's happened... the lockbox was gone. We're not sure where our keys are, but our realtor is on the case. At this point, since we ultimately succeeded in our goal, I'm more amused than frustrated. If nothing else I suppose we can break in. It is our house, after all. And getting detained for B&E would be an awesome end to this ridiculous saga.
(note for potentially worried parents: we are not actually going to break in... at least, not yet)

Update #2:
Our realtor brought me the keys at work today (8/21). I went by the house to sweep up miscellaneous debris. I set out a doormat and took down the remaining foreclosure signage. Steve verified that the much contended water fees to the city were indeed paid, and he is getting the utilities transferred over to us. I talked to our local post office about where we can put up our new mailbox (since there currently isn't one). We'll meet with our contractor this Friday to talk about the upcoming work. She expects to be able to start in the middle of next week. I think we're both in shock. It doesn't feel real at this point.

Two Week Old News is Better than No News

My parents were in town a couple weeks ago, a visit originally designed to coincide with closing on our new house so they could help us work on it. Ha ha ha ha...

Regardless of ridiculousness on the housing front, it was still a great visit. We were able to celebrate my mom's birthday in style, courtesy of a rather large gift card Steve received as a thank you for a work thing. Off we went to Shadowbrook Restaurant.

We had a great meal and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. I took the opportunity to harass my brother as much as possible (as older sisters are contractually obligated to do):

I love that the family picture below gives the impression that my mom and I aren't all that different in height from my dad and brother.

It was a great dinner and a fun visit. Hopefully we'll have a chance to get together again soon.

Almost there? Part Deux UPDATED

We signed the loan documents today. Our realtor expects that we'll close next Wednesday. Fingers crossed.

UPDATE 8/15/12: The money (ours and the lender's) is with the escrow company. Waiting for seller sign-off. Any day now...

Almost there?

Allegedly, our loan documents are complete and we should be able to sign them tomorrow, or at least Thursday. Presuming all goes well (a massive assumption at this point, I know) we should close escrow on Monday or Tuesday.

I'm being very careful not to get too excited, as we've met with so many setbacks in this process so far. If keys are actually handed over, though, well... there's a bottle of champagne chilling in the fridge.