House hunting--Day 2

Today was Day 2 of the house hunting adventure in Batesville!  We were originally scheduled to see FSBO homes at nine and one, then four homes with a realtor beginning at three, and finally another FSBO home at seven.  Our realtor ended up having to go to a closing in Little Rock this afternoon, so the showings of those four got postponed. 

This was the first home we saw this morning:

After seeing the home and walking through, it was AUTOMATICALLY eliminated!!  No one's been living in the home for quite a while, apparently.  The gentleman showing the home said his ex-wife lived there for three or four months after they divorced, then she took the kids and moved out, leaving behind a couple of dogs and a trashed house that he's left to clean up.  He's got a LOT of work to do!

This was the second home of the day:

This is our new favorite home!!!  It has the kitchen we're looking for,

a big backyard for the kids and Sweet Pea (including a three-hole putting green for Adrian!),

and a craft room for me!

We looked at one other FSBO home this afternoon,

but the house just didn't "feel" right when we walked in.  It had lots of square footage, but we thought it was a little pricey, and the backyard was all trees, leaves, and rocks.  YUCK!

Our top choice now is the second home we viewed today, and we're hoping to make an offer on it tomorrow or Thursday.  If you are a praying person, please pray that everything goes well for us with our offer and financing.  If things don't work out with the offer, then we'll be visiting the other realtor-listed homes at the end of the week.  Wish us luck!

House Hunting--Day 1 (Part 3!)

It's the final post about Day 1 of our house hunting adventure!  The next-to-last home of the day was a historical home on Eighth Street in Batesville and was once the home of the tenth governor of Arkansas, Elisha Baxter.

This was MY favorite house of the day!  I loved the staircase,

the den,

and the kitchen,

but my absolute favorite part of the property was this,

which included a workshop on the bottom floor and this BEAUTIFUL studio on the top floor.

The opposite wall was solid windows, and I knew this would be the PERFECT craft studio for me!  Unfortunately, though, the home only had two bedrooms upstairs, which just doesn't work for us.  IF ONLY!

Adrian's favorite property of the day included a home (which I unfortunately did not get a picture of the front of), an in-ground pool inside a pool house,

and forty-eight acres of land.

This is Adrian's DREAM property!  Unfortunately, though, we think it's just too much land for us to handle at this point in time.  One of these days, I promised Adrian we would own property like this!

Day 2 of our house hunting adventure continues tomorrow with six more properties!  Hopefully one of these will be the magic one.  I'll be back tomorrow or Wednesday to share our new adventures!

House hunting--Day 1 (Part 2)

As promised, I'm back to share some more of the homes we visited last week.  One of the other homes we viewed was the home of a childhood/high school friend:

Unfortunately, the current owners have renters right now who don't seem to have taken the best of care of the property.  The back yard was the perfect size for what we're looking for, but the decks on the back of the house need be replaced, and the kitchen wasn't in great shape either.  NEXT!

This house is currently second on our list:

It has the square footage we're looking for, a nice kitchen, and a shop for Adrian.  It also has a fenced-in yard for Sweet Pea (our St. Bernard), but it has one disadvantage--the shop was quite a ways down a hill from the house.  We like lots of other things, though, so it's still on the short list.

We looked at two homes in the Eagle Mountain subdivision, including this one:

Neither of them were what we're looking for.  The driveway of the home pictured above was WAAAAY too steep, and the other one had no back yard to speak of.



Part Three of the house hunting posts will include MY favorite home of the day and ADRIAN'S favorite home of the day, so stay tuned!



House hunting--Day 1

Who knew house hunting was so EXHAUSTING?!?!?  We had a full day of house hunting last Friday and were BEAT at the end of the day!  I thought I'd share some of our prospects, so please feel free to let me know what you think!

Our first visit was here:

This property includes twelve acres and a small pond, along with a shop for Adrian.  The kitchen is pretty open, which is important for both of us:

I think this property is one at the top of our list right now, and there's also a finished basement for my crafty stuff!

Our next stop (if I remember correctly!) was here:

We excluded this one pretty quickly, as there wasn't much storage and no dishwasher in the VERY small kitchen!  One feature we DID like, though, was this:

Yes, you're seeing that correctly--a theater room!  They converted their garage into a theater room complete with comfy reclining seats, surround sound, and a movie screen.  It was pretty cool!!!

I'll share a few more home visits in another post, including a neat historical home that I LOVED but was excluded for a particular reason.  Thanks for stopping by!

I'm back!!!

WOW!  I didn't realize it had been so long since I last posted!  Thanks to all of my followers who are still around!  My life's been so crazy the past few months that blogging simply got put on the back burner.

My husband retired from the Marine Corps on April 30 (officially) after twenty years of service.  Congratulations, baby!  You deserve everything you've earned, and I am SO proud of you!!!  As a result, we were required to move out of base housing at Camp Pendleton.  Adrian (my husband) and Joseph (my youngest son) left for Oklahoma at the end of April, while I stayed in Oceanside to finish out the school year teaching at Army and Navy Academy in Carlsbad, California.  I was very fortunate that Karen Kelly and her husband, John, allowed me to stay in their second home in Oceanside for about seven weeks until school was out.

Adrian and Kennedy (my oldest son) took the Amtrak from Oklahoma to California the first week of June, and they LOVED it!!!  Who knew train trips could be so exciting???  We love a good road trip, so we left Oceanside on June 12 headed for Arkansas.  We stopped at the Meteor Crater in Arizona and took a ride on the Sandia Peak Tramway in New Mexico along the way, and we made it to Edmond, Oklahoma (where Adrian's mom lives), on Friday, June 15.  It was so good to finally see my little Joseph, as he stayed with his MeMe when Adrian and Kennedy took their train trip.  We drove to my parents' house in Batesville, Arkansas, on Saturday, June 16, and we've been here ever since!

I was fortunate enough to get hired to teach tenth grade English at Batesville High School (my alma mater!) the Monday after arriving in Batesville, so our priority ever since then has been house hunting!  I think we've seen five homes already, we're scheduled to see three more in the next two days, and we have about six or seven more on the list that we're waiting to have scheduled.  We just haven't found the right one yet, but we're confident that we WILL find JUST what we're looking for!

I hope we find it soon, too, as I RRREEEAAALLLYYY miss being able to create layouts, cards, and projects regularly!!!!  There are a few design teams having DT calls right now that I've thought about applying to, but I think I'm going to wait until we're settled in a house of our own first.  Wish us luck on the house hunting this week!  I'll be back soon to keep everyone updated!

~Ashley

Mother of All Blog Hops!!!

Happy Mother's Day, everyone!!!  For those of you who celebrate it, I hope you've had to the opportunity to either spend time with your mother, talk to your mother, or remember your mother if she's no longer with you.  Unfortunately, I'm not able to be with any of my family today due to the logistics of being in the middle of a move, but I'm sure I'll talk to all of them today, and I'll spend the day doing some things I enjoy.  And now . . . ON TO THE BLOG HOP INFORMATION!!!

Hello, Stampers!

Welcome to the 3rd annual Mother of All Blog Hops sponsored by There She Goes Clear Stamps!  Over the course of yesterday and today, we (customers and trendsetters!) have and will be featuring some of our favorite There She Goes Clear Stamps sets!  Not only that, we're going to give YOU a chance to win some fabulous prizes!  To find out how, please go to the There She Goes' blog and read the simple instructions.

For my project, I chose to use the Oh, Snap! clear stamp set.

I LOVE this stamp set!  I think it's so versatile.  Since I'm in the middle of moving and most of my scrappy stuff has been packed by the movers, I'm a little limited in what I have to work with.  I decided to make this card, because it can be used for so many things.  My initial intention is to use it as a belated birthday card.

I started by stamping some of the large cameras onto my dotted patterned paper using brown ink, then I also stamped one on my plaid (sort-of) PP and cut it out, adhering it to my background using pop dots.  The film canister was also stamped on the "plaid" PP, and I stamped the sentiment onto the "film" before fussy cutting.  I adhered it to the background and then affixed the background to the front of the card before adding the twine.  Voila!

Thanks for stopping by!  I'll be having a giveaway once I reach 250 followers, so I'd LOVE it if you became a follower!  My posts are a little slow right now because of the move, but I'll be back to regular posting soon!  Happy scrapping!

Please click on the InLinkz below and follow it to the next blog!

Mother's Day cards

In preparation for Mother's Day, I made Mother's Day cards for my mom and mother-in-law to go along with their homemade gifts this year.

I ran a piece of ecru cardstock through my Cuttlebug, embossing it with the D'vine Swirls folder, then I inked the edges with some pink ink.  I tied a piece of pink sheer ribbon around the cardstock before adhering it to the card front.  The background on the flower was cut out with my Cuttlebug using a Sizzix die.  I stamped the flower directly onto the pink background then again on ecru cardstock before adhering the flower with pop dots.  The flower is from The {Stamps} of Life, and the "Happy Mother's Day" sentiment is from Close To My Heart.  The adhesive pearls are from Recollections and were purchased at Michael's.

I hope everyone has a great Mother's Day!  Be sure to stop back by tomorrow to see my creation for the There She Goes Clear Stamps Mother of All Blog Hops!  Happy scrapping!