The final countdown and whatnot

On Friday, I put in a request to KMHD to make me a sweet potato pie. She totally said yes! She even delivered it to me! What a good little sister. Thanks, KMHD.

The pie, delightful. She cut the amount of sugar, so you can focus on the sweet potato & spice flavors. It totally lifted my spirits & helped me take a moment to appreciate autumn & the beautiful weather which I haven't had time to do. Here comes Halloween, my favorite holiday and I've got no pumpkins or decorations; nary a chrysanthemum in sight!   I've got the candy, which is so bare bones.  Hopefully, I can make up for it next season.  Anyway, the pie lent me a moment of normalcy. This living between two places is starting to take it's toll. I'm grateful that we're moving next week. Move in ready. Move on ready.

I can't even figure how many hours we've put toward the Olive St. house cleaning & preparing.  Labor INTENSIVE.   We've dealt with mildew, dank smells & strange ooze on some walls.   All of the rooms, with the exception of the mud room, are ready to be lived in. We're hoping that all of the pre-packing & cleaning we've done will make for an exceptionally smooth transfer.  I had all of our movers in mind -- I didn't want their volunteer experience to be complete misery.   

Removing ickle carpet from the closet:

Shelf-lining. This is temporary as it probably won't be long before we tear the mother out:

So fresh and so clean clean:

Ah, the fun stuff:  I'm excited because not only do we have expected packages being delivered to our new home (Thank you, Allan! We shall return the favor!), but we should be receiving our new post box, too! Like so:


An inexpensive way to add !!! to the exterior of the home, yes?  I'm currently looking into new house numbers, too.  Should we paint them?  Or should we go ahead & invest in something nice?  I love this:

According to the website that I found them on, these were installed throughout Portland, Oregon in the 1930s, which is pretty damn ideal since our home was built in 1935. Yeah, we pretty much have to do it now.  If we're going to do it, might as well do something we adore.  I'm looking forward to spending drab winter days going through paint swatches & decorating.  I've got lovely visions of painting and catching up on podcasts and sipping tea.  

We may get our major kitchen appliances sooner than later, which is very good news for me!  Word on the street is that ATM's momma is going to help us with the stove.  And I've decided to be a big girl & put the refrigerator on my credit card.  We will be able to take care of that with our tax credit.  And once we get that tax credit, we'll be able to get a new washer because ours just went kaput this weekend.  I'm just thankful we have a dryer.  We agreed that washing clothes at a laundromat isn't as awful and drying.  

We're grateful for the first-time home buyer's tax credit itself!  Not only are we realizing the big dream of owning a home, but we're getting a leg up, too!  I don't know who to thank, so I'll just thank President Obama.  He gets a lot of misplaced blame, so I'll give him some misplaced thanks.  Oh, and taxpayers.  Thanks, you lot!

Heather, who is a sweetheart, texted me this evening to see what we're going to do for my birthday, which is a week from today.  Awwwww!  I had already written it off in my mind because we'll be moving.  I'd like to do something at our new home the following weekend (Nov. 7).  I'm envisioning an intimate birthday party involving a nacho bar & an ice cream cake.  Maybe we can fire up ye olde fire pit, too.