Finally Recovered! A Few Pictures of the New Place

Wow, that was an insane move! It made me so tired, that I'm just now recovering. Where do I begin? We used the same moving crew we did last year, and they were just as good as the last time. They worked so hard, and it was so darn hot too. The main living area is upstairs, so they had to climb many times hauling all our stuff, but completely kept their sense of humor.  We are really liking the house and adjusting to being in a different town. So far it hasn't been at all bad and it helps when the new neighborhood is quaint and you have a nice neighbor. What a concept huh? Nice people to live next to!!!  The house was very nicely redone by the landlords and we are enjoying all the nice features, such as the beautifully finished hardwood floors. I just gave them a few squirts of "Bona" floor cleaner and look how pretty they are.  This half of the house is pretty bright and has a lot of beautiful natural light, which I love and it will be good for taking photos in the winter months. I'm not sure if I want little Riki bird there all the time, but so far we haven't come up with a better plan for him. I think he may rotate around the house. He will not be there when dinner guests are coming, that's for sure hahaha. This weekend we will be hanging the art work up and this side will be done! We will also be picking up our coo coo clock up today, after being in repair for 13 months!!! I can't believe it is finally done, I sure did miss her, and I have just the spot for it.

I'm almost finished putting my studio back together also, pictures will follow soon I hope! It's just been so hot here, that I start to move around then I get hot and just sit :( The house has a great AC at least :)

All the fruit trees out in the yard are heavy with fruit and I can't wait to start harvesting them. Happy that we still have a lemon and orange tree also! The most exciting though, as I may have mentioned, is the avocado tree in the front yard. If you follow me on IG you may have seen the pic I took of one starting to grow. It's a beautiful healthy tree, as are the fruit trees. The neighbor has a really pretty apple tree near my fence. I bet that tree looks beautiful when it blooms in the spring. Speaking of blooms, there are some really pretty roses and also three or so peony bushes in the back yard as well.

Well, I must get to some more boxes, and I'll update soon as things start to come together, but thought I'd pop in so you didn't think I got lost in boxes and paper!!

Our New Place

 Breakfast nook, but I'm getting a kitchen island to put in this spot. Light fixture above is antique

 Love this built in bookshelf!

 Built in vanity

 Main bath

 Down to the lower level to laundry room, garage, and basement room

We move tomorrow, and I'm totally wiped out both mentally and physically! It's been tough looking for a place this time in our town. Extremely low inventory of rentals and prices sky rocketing like no bodies business. We had to move a bit farther afield to get this gem of a little place. I have some mixed feelings about leaving my town that I have lived in for over 20 plus years, but I'm afraid nothing quite this charming exists in my town that would be in my price range. I'm being a bit of a whiner right now, as I'm only about a 10 or 15 min. car trip down the freeway from said town. I was spoiled up to this point with everything being close at hand. I moved to a town that is closer to David's work though, and now his commute is only 10 min.  Now he can even come home for lunch.
The town is quite historic, and has a charming old town feel. It's has a mixed population and does have a reputation of more of a blue collar town, and with that you can imagine there are some less desirable areas.  The neighborhood where this house is though, is really quaint and has some beautiful vistas. The house sits high up and I'm sorry but I forgot to take a photo of the front before we left this evening. The landlords are very nice, and I think this is going to be such a better tenant landlord situation!  For that alone we are excited to get the heck out of this house and on to a much better situation.
The kitchen is one thing I'll have to get use to since it is on the small side, but to remedy the situation, I plan on getting a movable kitchen island to put in that little nook( this one). Other wise it has a great fridge, much bigger oven than I have now. The table and chairs in the picture are not mine, and I think ours will look really nice in this space! I'm excited for all the built ins too, and the bathrooms are fun!
I'm in love with the yard! I was really going to miss the yard we have now with all the citrus and all, but guess what?   This yard has an orange tree, lemon tree, several fruit trees like peaches, nectarines, persimmons, and plums. Oh and an avocado tree!!!! Yes you read that right, an avocado tree :)   I see many pies and tarts this summer.  I'll take better pictures of the yard soon and the front of the house.

The storage below the house, since it sits up high, is enormous and we can store some of our family room furniture that doesn't fit.  Lots and lots of storage thank goodness!

Well, I'm off to back up the last of the stuff in this house and I'm done!!!!

Moving Update # 3

Well......still nothing!  Because there is nothing, and we don't want to give this landlady any more rent money, we decided to put all of our worldly possessions in storage and stay with family in town. We could have stayed here through June, but I can't take another minute here. We are not sad about leaving this house at all, but sad that we don't have a new home yet! We never got attached to this house, and in all four of the bedrooms, we didn't commit to hanging very much or anything on the walls, so this will make it quicker this time to pack things up( well kind of). Even though I tried to make this place homey, it just never felt like home, given the situation with the back yard creature.   I have also decided after much thought, that I'm not going to write the whole story about our dreadful year in this house on here, because I don't want anymore pictures of this house or memories of what happened on my blog, BUT if you want to know the story with a few pictures, drop your email in the comment section and I'll tell it to you in private.
Since last week we have looked at a couple of condos to see if we could go that route. One was very pretty, but a tad too small and the layout was a bit tricky because when you opened the front door you had to go up stairs to the living quarters. Not a fan of this, and thinking about our ancient piano that weighs a ton, going up those stairs, scared me! The girl who owned the condo was so sweet, and had it decorated really nice. It was the first place that actually looked exactly like the pictures in the ad. I also drove by a house that was listed and got the address after I made an appointment to see it. Since it was empty, I decided to peek in the windows and look around. YUCK! It was just as ugly as the serial killer house we saw the first week we started looking. I called the guy back and cancelled the viewing appointment.
Then another condo came up, and by the pictures it looked like everything we wanted. We both got our hopes up on this one and could not wait to see it. It had a lot of square footage and beautiful views and the kitchen looked so nice in the photos.  Walking up to the front door we were met by a very nice lady and her dog. The minute I saw the way the front door area was kept, the red flags went up. Inside we saw an extremely messy house by the tenants in there, and they hadn't even started packing!  It was dark, and had popcorn ceiling from the time when builder thought that was cool. It had laminate flooring that was so so downstairs and not very well kept carpet going up the stairs and into all the bedrooms. OK.....If I have to see one more property with other peoples junk and dirty carpet one more time, I'm going to cry!!!!! The kitchen was not great, and looked far from how it did in the ad!!!! We decided that there was no way that we were going to push our budget and move into this place!  That is the other annoying thing with these landlords that use old photos of when the house was clean years ago, and then you walk in and everything, like the carpet and appliances, are about ready to be replaced, and they have wasted my time and hopes that it would be something I want. This lady was nice, but the other red flag was how she thought the walls looked just fine, and there wasn't really a need to paint them! REALLY, are we looking at the same walls?! When I spoke with her on the phone she said that she had been in there and that it was clean. For the life of me I just can't understand how people can live the way these people were living, and making the excuse that they had kids! My house never looked like this when I had little ones! There were three rooms in this house that had the most insane amount of legos that I have ever seen in my life! ANYWAY, we took an application but decided there was no way, even with it cleaned up, that we would enjoy this place.
Yesterday Zarin, Cyrous' mom, was so sweet to come over to help start packing. Her mom was the kind person who is letting us stay in her condo while we look. Caitlin and Cyrous will be there as well, so we will be roomies for a bit. We just don't want to rush into another property because of lack of time.  This is a first for us. Not finding a place to move into is a bit odd, and I feel as if I'm twisting in the wind a bit. The only time we have put our things in storage was when we moved to France, but that was an exciting move and perfect for that time in our lives. This time, it feels like we are putting ourselves in time out mode and taking somewhat of a break from life in an odd way. I can't wait to write a post which will include pictures of our new home. Last week I thought I'd try and do some sewing before I had to pack things up. The first picture is of the garment that I started to cut out when I got the certified letter that we had to move. My heart is not into finishing this, so I think I'll pack it up as a WIP and look forward to completing it sometime soon.
Well, break time is over and I have a mountain of things to do!  Not sure when I will be able to do another post, but I'll certainly try.  

Moving Update #2

I'm feeling rather defeated today because there is nothing new listed to see, and normally there are a few for weekend viewings. Wednesday we decided to step out of our town and look in a cool hip part of Oakland that would be fun to live in. In the past I have not considered moving through the tunnel because of what you get for the price. In our price range you would have to look for two bedrooms, which is fine, if the place is amazing, charming and worth it. I would be willing to pair down in an instant for something like that, but in reality, it doesn't exist and it only cemented what I already new about the area when I saw the house listed. Too much of a pie in the sky choice.  This place was built in 1919, and in the photos looked promising. It even said it had some basement storage. The minute we walked in, it smelled old and musty and was way too small, even though we were willing to pair down. Our bed would not even fit into the larger of the rooms. We went out to dinner afterwards, to take our minds off of the situation, but it really didn't help.
Today I am looking at another place that I don't want to go look at, mainly because I misread the location of this house and I don't like this neighborhood, but I'm looking anyway to confirm it for sure. I figure that we have only really just started looking and I don't want to grab something, only to be miserable again for a year or more. We are holding out hope that there will be more next week, but I'm not going to lie, the negative thoughts are creeping in about every 10 seconds.  Everyone keeps telling me to keep busy and not to worry, things will turn out fine. They usually do, but somewhere in my mind I keep hearing....."This time it won't." That nagging little voice keeps me from doing anything normal throughout the day, even though it would probably make me feel better to get my mind off of things. Instead I sit here hitting the refresh button one too many times and panicking :(    It also does not help to hear and see the creature out back roaming in the yard without a care in the world, and not knowing what torment she has caused. All because she can't be loud with her friends without being told to keep it down!
Since we have always rented, I have always fought to find the perfect, or near perfect nest for us. I feel like we at least deserve that, since we are unable to buy anything. Now I feel defeated and that even that is going to be taken away from us.   We seriously need some miracle to happen soon! There is just way too much on our plates right now that is causing too much stress.

Not the blogpost I was hopping to post today, but I'm keeping it all real and documenting the highs and lows, so hopefully when things are better I can see that sometimes it is darkest before the dawn.............

Keeping Busy

Well, after the shock of having to learn that we have to move again, I'm trying to keep positive and keep busy. I have all my Craig's list searches on email alert. I check every hour on the hour for updates and try and proceed with daily chores, because really, what else can one do?!

The process is always the same it seems. Since we have always been renters, I can't remember a time when it wasn't any different.  We have lived through many renting scenarios. College renting, sub-leasing, and living abroad to name a few. All of these scenarios were stressful and tearful at times. Why does it have to be this way I wonder? Why can't it be easy, or why can't the first property you look at be "the one?" I think I'm going to keep up with the process on here, so that later I will have a reference as to what we went through.  So here is update number one.    We found out on a Tuesday April 28th that the landlady would not renew the lease. I was half shocked and upset. Half shocked because like I said in my last post, I had a feeling this was coming since the landlady hadn't sent us an updated lease to sign, and things with her daughter out back have not really gotten any better. She has chosen to make this property a revolving door instead of reigning in her daughter's shenanigans out back. After we find a place and secure everything, stay tuned for the whole story because I really want to tell it. More as a cautionary tale, and nothing more.
Wednesday, I hit Craig's list and lined up a couple of places to look at. The first one was a new build from 2003, so I thought hey this might be nice. When I got inside I was instantly disappointed and it smelled like pets. The carpet was buckling and there was just far too much of it, plus the agent did not list the property with the correct rent. It was 100 dollars more than it said, which was already pushing our budget. The agent was very friendly and as we told him a bit about us. He felt badly for our situation and said we would be at the top of his list if something comes up, because we were the type of tenant that the company loves. Tell that to my landlady! Oh yeah, she was already told this by the property management that was managing this property to begin with, but she chose not care.( She took control of the property  management in December)
Next property I didn't really want to go and see since I google mapped it and it looked a bit sketchy from the picture, but I thought what the heck, we will go check it out.   As we wound our way through a neighborhood, that I didn't even know existed, I was doubtful that this could be good. The person on the phone was pleasant and funny so I was curious. They were asking a pretty penny with a 4,000 dollar deposit for what looked like a house that a serial killer would live in. When she let us in, form the garage, and into the kitchen, I immediately got an overwhelming feeling that something bad happened in this house! We looked at each other and were ready to bolt, but decided to be kind just in case this was some kind of joke and we would be murdered  and never to be heard from again hahaha! On the phone the lady said she runs criminal checks, and asked if that was going to be ok. I should have bowed out at that point, but like I said, I was intrigued and wanted no stone unturned. Anyway, we said thanks we will keep it in mind (NOT!!!!) We peeled out of there fast!!!  Back home I kept checking the CL and hoping another property came up. Two did, so I made appointments for Saturday morning to see them.  First one was a two story newer house that looked cute in the photo. The guy who owned it was super nice but the house wasn't for us. The layout was too cramped and again way too much carpet and not enough room for our key pieces of furniture.  The second property was a two bedroom condo in a nice peaceful neighborhood, and had it been a tiny bit bigger, we would have possibly considered it. All the people we met, except the killer house, we really liked and would have been great landlords. All of them could not believe our story and then wished the best of luck for us.
Today is Monday, and a few have come up, but all far out in our very last on the list areas that we would consider living in. I'm trying this time to not panic and take something that won't work for us, kind of like this house that we are in now. This house had so much potential, and had she possibly had a real tenant out in the cottage, it could have worked. Looking back on this situation with this house I saw the red flag the day I finally got to meet the kid out back, but it was the day we had already signed the lease and committed ourselves to move here. BIG mistake!!!! I'm still dumbfounded that a parent would let their kid dictate something this major in not just our lives but her own ! Oh well, I'm choosing to push this all out of my head and carry on forward to greener pastures, where ever they may be. Stay tuned. I'll do another update on Friday or, if something great comes along!

P.S. The picture I chose above was to convey that I'm hoping for blue skies and good days ahead!

Happy Easter!

This year Easter has been low key at our house, but still celebrated. I love this little statue that I bought a while back at our church. It is from Bethlehem and hand carved out of olive wood, it always gives me a peaceful feeling when I look at it.
We went to Easter Vigil last night, and it was such a pretty service. This mass includes the confirmation candidates, and they always do such a beautiful ceremony for it. When I was confirmed in the Catholic church, way back when, you did it in eighth grade. Now they do it in high school, which I think is much better, since you are a bit more mature.  We have been going to the vigil instead of Easter morning mass since the girls got older. On Easter morning, I'm cooking breakfast or preparing for our big Easter dinner, and it is so hard to fit it all in. I heard someone at church last night say, "It's Easter in the Vatican right now, so it counts." I thought that was pretty funny!
Because the house is upside down we decided this year to have dinner out to not put stress on anyone.

Speaking of the move, we have decided to take the "Mad Men" era house, and we will be moving on May 2nd. I was pleased that they did about 90% of what I wanted them to fix, one being the crazy mural on the wall! Thank the stars above, the landlord came to her senses and agreed to paint over it. They also painted all the doors that were yucky 60's honey colored brown, all in white. The ugly sliding glass door, and front door were replaced, and according to the property manager, that went to take a look the other day, said it looked really nice. She sent pictures of one of rooms that was getting new flooring, I think it is the kitchen. I like the choice they made so this is good too. Now the only eyesores left are the lights in the hallway and the light in the mater bath, and of course the over all dated aspect of the two bathrooms. I found this blog though and lost myself for a few hours, looking at old bathrooms from mid-century homes, and how some people actually covet their pink bathrooms! There is an actual facebook page that is called, "Save the Pink Bathroom."(If you want a laugh, or you happen to love pink dated bathrooms, click on the links) I was going to yank the knobs off the cabinets and replace them with something modern, but after I spent some time on those sites, I kind of think I will leave them and work with the retro aspect of them. I'm just really happy that the house wasn't built in the 70's, or I would be dealing with harvest gold, or avocado green, but even those are coming back in vouge, yikes! If the landlord doesn't replace the hideous lighting  in the master bath, which by the way is not from the 60's, that will be one of the first things we change out. I'm hoping that she at least changes the ugly track lighting that looks like lighting from a TV studio. It will be nice having 4 bedrooms too, something I did not plan on. The price is really good too which helps soften some of the other not so fantastic things, like I mentioned in my last post. I hope you come back and look at the photos I plan to take of this house. I will try and take some when it is empty so you can see the bones of it, and then slowly post rooms as they become finished. So come join me for some fun and games with moving into yet another mid-century California ranch house!

Happy Easter again, to all those who celebrate it!!!