Old House by the River

April is one of my favorite months. Easter usually falls at the beginning of the month, and besides celebrating the Resurrection, it's also a time for family and fellowship, (oh how I miss the days when I could get away with bonnets for the girls and a tie for the Dude!). The weather begins changing and I greatly appreciate those first few warmer days of spring, after a dreary and sun-deprived winter. April also means the start of the home stretch for the kid's schooling, as Spring Break happens and then prepping for M-Step starts, as well as the beginning of the countdown for days left in the school year. And on a more personal note-this April marks my 4 year weight-loss maintenance anniversary. With something like a 90 percent failure rate for weight loss adherence beyond 2 years, I continue to be humbled by the fact that I'm one of the very few people who are successfully maintaining their weight loss, long term. This time of year is always one of reflection for me, as I...

We've now been in our new home for almost two months and time has flown by! Almost all the moving boxes have been unpacked, and we're slowly starting to collect the stuff we stored at the in-laws. My father-in-law dropped off the kids' basketball hoop earlier this week and I hope our neighbors haven't minded the 'thunk-thunk' of basketballs at 8am! One thing I've noticed, now that the weather is turning mild, is that it's so noisy here from all the birds! The river really attracts them and they're a pretty vocal group. It's a much nicer sound though, than all the traffic noise we used to hear from Lake Michigan Dr. Don't miss that sound at all! Another neat thing we've discovered is that the GVSU Crew team practices on the Grand River and we've seen them several times as they've rowed by our property! The kids enjoy 'chasing' them as far as they can go, before the boats slip around the bend. As far as projects go-we...

Nick had work training in Virginia last week, so I used that time to do a few things to the back entrance way/laundry room. This room probably won't have much done to it as far as remodeling goes, but it needed a few cosmetic updates. I freshened up the paint on the cupboards, changed out the knobs and spray painted the handles; painted the walls a light green, added a valance to the window and then Nick put in a new light fixture before he headed out, (before it just had an exposed bulb). For under $100, and a few hours of elbow grease, it came together nicely! BEFORE AFTER

Lots going on over here as we continue to unpack and settle in. We've done numerous small projects and Nick patched some of the more dire spots on the roof, we added a couple of cabinets to the kitchen to give us more cupboard space, got the new curtains and blinds hung up and then I've been working with my sister-in-law and mother-in-law to decorate the living room, (more on this later). We've also been cat-sitting my uncle's cat, while he recovers from an accident, and she's made herself at home in our spare bathroom's sink! Its been a very busy few days and things are really starting to come together nicely!

When we decided to buy our new house we knew we were walking into a long term project that would take many years to complete. Not only were we going to be living in this house for the foreseeable future, but we were also looking at it as an investment. And after a few days of settling in we were ready to make of our first (of many), trips to Lowes . We moved from Standale to Lamont, which doesn't seem like a big difference but wow, driving into Grandville felt like we were on a road trip! We really are in the country now and will have to plan our outings to consolidate errands together. The first and most pressing thing on our list was toilets. The house has three bathrooms and two of them were having functioning issues (we won't even talk about the zebra print wallpapered tub or purple walls yet!). Getting these two bathrooms usable was a project my father-in-law, Don, was willing to tackle and we were more than happy to buy him all the parts he wanted! We also picked up a c...

After our previous run-ins with the seller, we decided to invest in a security system and Monday night Nick and a friend set up cameras with recording capabilities. We wanted to be prepared for whatever the seller had in store for us the next day, when she was scheduled to come back and get the rest of her items off of the property. Tuesday rolled around and she showed up three hours earlier than the set time, while I was bringing Alora to orchestra practice. Nick was home though and he had a deputy stop in and make sure she was behaving, and the deputy also told her that any of her property left at the end of the day would be brought to the road, and if the second car was still in the garage it would be towed away. She started loading her car as I pulled in and Alora and I were verbally assaulted on the walk/dash to the door. After we got inside I saw that my new living room furniture from Talsmas had been delivered. Nick said the seller screamed and swore at the two de...

Part one of our move in story was quite the tale, and it gets even crazier during the few days that followed our move-in date! The day after we moved in we were faced with several issues with the house that were not disclosed by the seller. Two of the bathrooms' toilets were not working properly-one of them had a crack that poured water on the floor when used, making it totally unusable. We also discovered that water was dripping into the kitchen from a bad spot on the roof, the pellet stove in the living room was almost unusable due to neglect, several outlets did not work, as well as a few of the light fixtures; if you used the sprayer on the kitchen sink it locked into the 'on' position and sprayed water all over and probably the most frustrating issue for me-the oven did not work (discovered this on Monday night when I was trying to make supper). Oh, and we discovered that the seller had removed the lint trap from the dryer, and when I tried to dry clothes socks got su...