Not sure where this blog is going to go yet so I’m just going to see what happens.  First off, we got the inspection report back today.  The good news, nothing major is wrong with the house.  The bad/annoying news, the inspector was apparently a nit picky twit!  I mean I guess for the money the buyer spent she should know this stuff but really, a few spindles on the deck need to be hit with a hammer, literally!  A couple of things the appliance installers should have done, like tie up the dishwasher drainage tube and attaching the oven to the wall.  I guess a few receptacles are loose.  The light in the storage closet needs another screw.  You see where I’m going here?  Yeah…..crap that any idiot with a hammer and screwdriver can fix.  Well honestly I guess I shouldn’t  bitch about having a laundry list of hammer and screwdriver fixes.  There were only 2 semi problematic things which really M and I could fix but we will probably hire someone to do these things.  Hell depending on the cost we might get him to fix the whole list.  I guess I’m just mad that it’s a bunch of little pettily stuff.

Oh but the funniest part about the whole thing is, the realtor calls me to tell me he is about to send the report to me when he starts to tell me what’s on there.  Guess what the first words out of his mouth are?  You got it, insulation.  I was like sh*t!  He proceeded to tell me that the insulation in the attic is covering a few of the vents over the eves and just needs to be pushed back.  WHEWWWW!

On another note I think I am addicted to theknot.com message boards.  And it’s not helping.  I keep reading about all these other people’s plans and dates and places and I am envious.  I am ready to have a plan and a date and a place.  These stupid boards also caused me to almost buy a dress online today.  It was on sale.  A REALLY good sale.  After I got all excited about one dress in particular I realized they no longer had my size or a size that could be fitted.  Oh well.  At some point I will actually start the search.  And by start I mean actually go to a store and try some on.  I keep gravitating towards the same style so I should probably see if I look good in something like that before I buy something offline, on a whim, on sale.

Well I guess I should wrap this up.  M interpreted me to start putting my stuff in the car and well I’ve lost my focus.  🙂

Beach bound I am!  Have a great weekend.

This morning was the inspection for the house.  Last night I dreamed there was something wrong with all of the insulation under the house and it was letting Nitrogen into the house.   So M and I had to go to the hardware store and buy all of this tar-paper like stuff to cover the insulation and it was going to cost us like $10,000.00.  Weird dream huh.  And if it comes true, I don’t know what I’d do.  HA!  I am just crossing my fingers that everything goes okay.  I’m only hoping for okay.

This also comes in the wake of finding out that my cousin is now not closing on her house today due to the buyer.  Apparently the buyer’s house appraised for a considerable amount less.  Honestly I’m not sure exactly what is going on, only that they aren’t closing and they are staying in a hotel since the house was almost completely packed yesterday when they got this news.  What a nightmare.  Hopefully M and I will only need to worry about this inspection and the girl’s loan getting approved.

On the flip side, I think we may have finally found a place to get married.  And by place I mean island.  No hotel yet.  The island I am now heavily leaning towards is one of the few that no longer has residency requirements.  This means M and I only have to go to the registrar’s office and then we can get married.  This means we could possible fly down on Thursday, go to the office if we arrive in time and get married on Friday or Saturday.  Or we could go to the office on Friday and get married on Friday, leaving us the WHOLE week to “honeymoon” and spend time with family and friends.  This makes me excited beyond words.  Now I just need him to find a hotel because I have the “shiny” disease.  Meaning I look at pics, say OMG I love it!!!!!  With no regard for pricing or food options or even how many rooms they might have.  This is why M has been assigned this one task.  Hopefully we will settle on this one island and he will find a hotel soon and I can update the wedding website. 🙂

Yesterday marked mine and M’s 2 year anniversary.  WOW it’s been a long time. :)  It’s funny because we don’t really have an “official” anniversary date.  M and I met at the beach 2 years ago and neither of us really remember when our first, first date was.  So we picked a date, May 24th and rolled with it.  We didn’t make any plans for the night and said no gifts.  We had a nice quiet night at home.  Just the two of us.  We cooked dinner and watched TV.  We are super exciting 🙂

It’s funny how much your life can change in the course of 2 years.  In this time I have bought and sold a house.  Fallen in love with the most amazing man I’ve ever met.  Taken some amazing trips.  Gotten engaged.  And now I am planning a wedding so I can spend the rest of my life with this person.  Who would have thought a simple beach trip with the girls would lead to all this?  Not me.  Who knew that by passing up another job, this one would lead me to the person I want to spend my life with?  Crazy huh!

All I know is that I love M.  He treats me with love and respect.  He takes care of me and laughs at me.  He laughs with me and he even lets me cry.  I can’t wait to be his wife.

It’s Monday and I am exhausted.  M and I spent most of yesterday “cleaning”.  The plan is to move M’s office downstairs to the bonus room and use his current office as another bedroom.  We decided we needed to get on this since we will be moving my furniture over soon.  (I am soo excited to FINALLY have my stuff in OUR house.)

I went through the boxes of my stuff that we’d brought to M’s house and decided what needed to go in the attic and what needed to stay down.  After that we went upstairs to tackle his office.  We got the closet cleaned out and I carried the bookcase downstairs.   M decided what could go in the attic and what needed to stay down.  Once M got in the attic he realized there were 2 bags full of clothes that we needed to go through so he threw those down, arranged some boxes and then we put the other boxes up.  We went to the guest room and started sorting through the bags to see what could go to goodwill and what needed to be trashed.  Well that lead us to then cleaning out the guest bedroom closet.  I have not seen so many clothes in a LONG time.  We had 5 piles of t-shirts, shirts, sweaters, pants and a lone pair of shorts on the bed.  And a HUGE trash pile.  (On the plus side I did find a new fleece, brand new, with tags :))  However the closet is now clean but there are 5 trash bags full of goodwill clothes in the room.  Not including the 2 we took to the trash yesterday.

I guess you could say we had a spring cleaning of sorts.  All in all it was a pretty exhausting day.  Not to mention the last episode of Lost was on last night, til 11:30.  For those of you who watch, and have been loyal watchers, I say this, I am glad I didn’t spend years on this show.  Seasons 1 and 2 and parts of last season and this whole season were enough for me.  Don’t get me wrong the ending wasn’t bad (hello Titanic ending) but it was not something that left me feeling fulfilled.  What the HELL really happened?!?!  So that is my mini-rant for today.  Now if I could just curl up on the couch and take a nap this Monday would drastically improve.

I guess I also have the countdown to the BEACH!!!!!!!!!!  T-minus 4 days…..

I normally don’t write on the weekends but M is on the phone and I’m waiting on him so we can finish up season 4 of Dexter.  Awesome show if you haven’t seen it.

Anyway, yesterday my parents drove down to drop off some of my old stuff and to pick up a table and chairs from the house.  Mom emailed on Thursday to make sure it would be okay and I said it was fine.  Today M and I went over to the house to see what they had dropped off.  We walked in to find a couple of plastic tubs and a few boxes.  After eating our lunch I started to go through the boxes while M fixed a few things around the house.  Most of the boxes contained stuffed animals, dolls, some books and a few other random things.  It was pretty cool digging through the boxes and seeing all the old dolls and animals I had as a child.  I made two piles, a keep pile and a goodwill pile.  As I went through I showed M all the dolls/animals that were my favs as a child and put the others to the side.  Now the “keepers” are neatly packed away back in boxes that will eventually move to our attic.  :)  The others were dropped off at the local goodwill for other little girls to hopefully enjoy.

Among the boxes was a lone gift bag.  I looked in it and there was this orange and black thing.  I was pretty surprised to pull out a baby outfit that looks like a tiger.  I looked at M, he looked at me and we were both quite puzzled by this.  Inside was a note with mom’s handwriting.  This couldn’t be for us right?  Does someone know something I don’t know?  HA!  When we got home I emailed my mom and thanked her for bringing the stuff down and asked about the baby outfit.  She said it was something they’d had for a while.  Apparently my dad saw it one day and had to have it and decided to leave it now.  (And for those of you wondering why a tiger, I went to Auburn, GO TIGERS! 🙂 )

It’s 4 o’clock on Friday afternoon and my brain is fried and it’s BEER FRIDAY – at work ;).  This has been the longest, slowest week in quite a while.  As I sit here waiting for the system to load so I can actually do some work I decided, why not blog?! :)  So here we are.

Today I’ve spent most of the day looking at theknot.com.  M and I ran into a little snag with the wedding planning.  St. Lucia, the front runner at the moment, requires you be on the island for 2 days plus they do not perform weddings on Sunday.  At first I thought you couldn’t get married on the weekend at all but a friendly “knottie” informed me otherwise.  This still puts a kink in my plan.   I would like to go down on Wednesday, get married on Saturday and leave on Thursday.  This would allow us plenty of “honeymoon” time.  M on the other hand wants to go down on Sunday, get married on Friday and leave on Sunday.  This is crazy I know.  That makes our honeymoon 2 DAYS!!!!!!!!!  Not so happy about that.  Now I’m thinking maybe we should start looking at places that are more US friendly like the US Virgin Islands, mainly St. Thomas, or Puerto Rico, hello 51 st State.

Needless to say I am confused and a bit frustrated.  I guess this is where theknot.com comes in.  Being a community of brides to be and former brides to be, there is alot of knowledge out there to help.  Hopefully this will help.

I guess the saying about idle hands is true.  Now that invitations are bought, save the dates are ready, I’ve decided to start obsessing over envelopes.  I know it’s is something stupid to obsess over but it’s all I have right now.  The invitations came with envelopes but I decided I had to have outer envelopes.  Plus this gives me an out if I accidentally mess up one.  Oh yeah, I forgot to mention I am going to HAND-WRITE each address.  This should be fun and interesting to say the least.

I searched online last night looking for outer envelopes, not really finding what I wanted.  So I decided to run to Staples at lunch and see what they had.  I was in luck I found some.  Not exactly what I wanted but I’m pretty sure I’m not going to find hot pink lined envelopes.  So white with silver lining will have to do.  They look nice and as soon as I open a pack I will see.

I might also have a small obsession with pens.  I mean really who actually writes these days?  But I figured if I was going to hand-write each invite I better make sure I had a quality pen that wouldn’t smudge or run.    And I got to buy some cool pens :)  I know I’m weird, and I’m okay with this.

So maybe I will use my cool new pens to start labeling the inner envelopes and see if I can’t do something with the idle hands 🙂

For months I have talked about setting up a website for my “future” photography business.  As luck would have it the web domain I wanted was available.  I told M I would like to set this up.  He said that it would be possible to add this on to his website with no issues.  So for months I have either forgotten to ask him to set this up or I have been busy and not really worried about my future aspirations.

Well the other night I finally remembered and M finally added this to his account.  YAY!  I am a website, sort of.  The domain is up and working, unfortunately the operator has done a whole lot of nothing.  First off I need to find a suitable website theme.  I would love a flash site but M insists he is not skilled in flash and has no desire to figure this one out.  I can’t say I blame him really.  I’ve come across several pay sites but I don’t really think it is worth paying for a site if I have NO customers. 🙂

Plus I feel like my photography skills are still only okay.  So why do I need/want a website?  My goal is to one day be a famous photography!  HA, not really.  But I would like to do this in my spare time.  I think it would be great way to make some extra money especially once M and I have kids.   Anyway, as though I don’t have a wedding to plan I guess I am now also working on a website.  :)  I will update my progress with the site and maybe one day it will be up and running, with pictures and stuff. 🙂

I accepted an offer on the townhouse.  Wow what a day it has been.  I am sure the girl who made the offer is as excited to be a homeowner as I am to not be a homeowner.

Hello beach wedding here we come.  M and I can now start really saving.  🙂

I must say I am incredibly lucky to have M.  Thankfully he has helped throughout this whole process.  He really is an amazing person and I am so glad I have him in my life.  He has now helped me buy and sell a house. 🙂

Last night M and I finally got it, an OFFER!  YAY!  It was about what we expected.  After looking over the offer and doing a little research we came up with our counter offer.  I called the agent this morning with our counter.  He relayed this to his client who in return countered.  After running more numbers, while M was on the golf course, I came up with a few more options.  I sent these to M and we went over them and I think we have the “deal maker”.  Now if the agent would call me back I could present him with what will hopefully be the last deal and by the end of the day we will be “under contract”!

I knew the process wouldn’t be easy but I am finding myself more and more nervous.  I just need a shot!  :)  But really I hope there will be 2 sets of people that will have reason to celebrate tonight.