Frustrating Foreclosures

Our prayers go out to Boston and each family affected by the recent tragedy. We're praying for comfort and healing and justice served to those responsible for this disgusting act of hatred and violence. Our troubles are so little compared to what these families are experiencing. 

Frustration: to make (plans, efforts, etc.) worthless or of no avail; defeat; to disappoint.

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This is the perfect definition of what our "home buying" process has been.  Yes, we haven't been looking for an insanely long time, but nonetheless it is simply stupid the loop holes we have gone through.  I wish this was a more positive post in which I get to share that we've found the house.  Sadly, I'll have to leave that for another day.  I suppose the following is more of a venting/explosion of fiery rage on my part.

1. You will wait for what seems like forever.  The first house we made the leap to put an offer on fell through...after waiting a total of 8 days.  Sure, that's not a long time in the grand scheme we call life, but when you're waiting to see if the house of your dreams is yours, well, that's eternity. The banks communicate on their own time...which leads us to point numero dos.
2. The banks can be stupefyingly ignorant.  And that's putting it nicely.  Here has been the general timeline for each house we've been interested in:  We put an offer in on the house. We wait, wait, wait for 3 or 4 days. Then we hear the bank has decided they'd like to extend the "bid opening period" for another 2 or 3 days. We wait, wait, wait. Then we find out that we did not get the house (the crowd erupts in a thundering boo) via online, when the listing moves into pending status. Then we finally receive a phone call 3 days after that, that we did not get the house. DUH.
3. In our price range, there is a limited selection of homes to choose from. Basically, we're choosing the house with the lease amount of work.  But, on a positive side, more projects to blog about!  So, overall, we're ok with this point.
4. You have to stay on top of those banks like white on rice.  Seriously, there is little consideration for the buyer out there and if you're not calling and emailing everyday, pertinent information may never get to you.
5. First time home buyers, like us, might have a tendency to let others take the reigns in home searching.  But it's vastly important that you do your own research into every aspect of the home, neighborhood, city, and schools. This is one of the biggest decisions of your adult life...I don't want to leave that up to someone else to decide!  One home we looked at seemed like a great fit for us. The price was good, it was in a good neighborhood, and the city and schools were very nice. Diving deeper, we discovered that the house already had a government appraisal done and lead based paint was found inside the home. Not good. And that information was no where on the listing of the house. Of course that would have been found during an inspection, but we saved ourselves a few hundred dollars by finding out before!

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I am sorry for all the negativity.  This has been our experience so far and it's just frustrating when you're trying to find something you love and you've never experienced this process before.  Not everyone's experience is like this.  On the positive side, foreclosures have great potential to be turned around.  They could be worth a whole lot more with a little TLC.  And we truly are looking forward to some projects around the abode. We just need it to be livable for our Little Miss!  Hopefully, we'll be posting soon that we found our home...our home that we can't wait to put some love into!

Favs on Pinterest

It's been a while since we posted last...our Little Miss has been very under the weather. And while I love blogging, I love snuggling with my girl a whole lot more. So, while we're hanging out on the couch again today, I thought I'd share a few things I'm digging on Pinterest (as you'll see, there is no method to the madness). We're still in the middle of an insane in the membrane house search so obviously that's all I look at nowadays! Enjoy..

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These are just a few of my favs right now via my pinning of interests. Hopefully you'll run across some cool finds too..I'd love for you to share them too! 

We're Running 26.2 for Africa

Daily, there are families in Africa who are struggling to stay alive due to unclean water and lack of medical attention. As a mom, this absolutely breaks my heart knowing that children are dying just because their communities are unable to attain clean drinking water. My hubs and I have decided to take on the challenge of running the Detroit Marathon (Team World Vision) this year in order to raise funds for Africa. The amount we raise (along with the hundreds of other runners) will provide clean water and medical attention for communities in Africa through World Vision. World Vision is a non-profit organization that provides lifetime care for children in need around the globe. Our family currently sponsors two beautiful children; one from the Dominican Republic and the other is from Zambia.

Each of us {runners+supporters} have the incredible goal to raise over $1,300 in funds to send to Africa. This may seem like a whole lot of money, but $50 provides clean water to a person for their entire lifetime. The money we could potentially raise would provide clean water for 26(.2) people for the rest of their lives! Think about that. If every runner could raise their funds, thousands of people would have clean water forever. I wanted to share this with you not only because we are excited, but also because you guys will keep me accountable in my training!

If you would like to donate an amount of money to help us reach our goal, please visit http://teamworldvision.org/goto/michelledelange. The amount you donate is tax deductible. Last year, our team from our church ran the Chicago Marathon. They were able to raise funds to support for 11,000 people in Africa!! So far, we have raised over $600,000.00 towards clean water efforts. Thank you all for taking the time to read this. If you feel called, please donate!

Baby Proofing

She is officially on the move. And fast.
We had decided a while back that we had to get our behinds moving on baby proofing the house before Maddy started sprinting around. It still felt early to be doing such things, but it's really never too early to make your house safe, right? As first-time parents, the idea of baby proofing seemed completely daunting which is why we probably put it off for as long as we did! Here are some things we realized along the way:

1. Yes, they say this in all the baby books you'll find, but do get down at Baby's level and crawl around (the whole house). You'll see differently at that level and you'll most likely find things to proof you otherwise wouldn't have.
2. Think Baby. They will get into everything. Anything that hangs, flashes, makes noise, is shiny, opens, closes...the list goes on. That placemat you have on your table with the vase of flowers/cup of hot coffee on top? Baby will swipe that right off the table while you're trying (unsuccessfully) to get her strapped into her high-chair. Fail.
3. There is such a thing as overkill. We felt like we didn't want to raise Maddy in a padded room just so she would never get a boo-boo. Our babies, as much as we love and smooch them up, will get lots of bumps and bruises. So go ahead, remove that table cloth and wind up those blind cords. For us, it is not the end of the world if we miss a few furniture edges.
4. Baby proofing seems to be a never ending process. Maddy is learning to move around so well and get into new things each day. When we think we're good, we realize what else needs to be proofed!

The first thing we did was go around our home and cover every outlet with plastic plugs, designed so little fingers find it difficult to get them out. If there were any outlets above counter top level, we opted to not cover them because even when Maddy can stand, they are too high for her to reach (we'll eventually be covering them).

We have blinds for window coverings and unfortunately, we can't remove them because of our apartment living status. We found these great circles that you can twist and the cord is wrapped on the inside, shortening it. For the metal beaded cords, well, they don't wind up so well so we just gathered the end up and clicked the unit shut.

 

Our TV is a flat screen that does have a pretty wide base on it, but we were still nervous about it toppling over onto Maddy if she yanked on it. We purchased two heavy duty straps that could be bolted into both the back of the TV and the stand. The straps can be adjusted in length so if the TV needs to be turned at an angle then it can.

We have a tall bookcase along side our TV stand that can very easily be pulled over. We used Mommy's Helper Furniture Brackets to mount it to the wall. One bracket is screwed into the wall and the other to the back of the bookcase. Then a heavy duty zip tie is put through both brackets and closed.

Our Kitchen/Bathroom cabinets do not have hardware on the outside of them and we also cannot damage the doors (ie. mount door catches on the interior of the door). So, with a helpful hint from my mom, we opted to place Command hooks of medium strength on the outside of the cabinets we needed to keep shut. Then, we placed locks over the knobs. The medium strips can hold the weight of 5 lbs and we thought this would suffice for Maddy until we have our own cabinets.

It is amazing how fast Maddy is catching onto to being mobile. While she is this little and still learning what "no" means, we will proof and proof some more. Eventually she will be old enough to understand what we can touch and shouldn't touch. But then we'll be so, so sad that she is not our tiny Little Miss anymore!

Get it together!

I was browsing through one of my favorite blogs out there, IHeart Organizing, in the archives way back in March of 2010 (I think!) and the incredible Jen caught my attention with her project of the month. In our household we are constantly trying to find ways to be more organized both physically (like space, clutter, storage) and mentally (peace of mind, knowing where to look for things, keeping our sanity). Now I see that January is Home Office month! Woot! So, I borrowed Jen's amazing idea and attempted a "household" binder chalked full of stuff important to our family.

There is a whole lot I'd love to fit into this binder:

• House Cleaning Checklist
• Menu Planning
• Bill Payment Checklist
• Address book
• Emergency Contact Info
• Travel Checklists (we visit family out of town often)
• Product Warranties/Instructions
• To Do Checklist
• Blog Post Ideas
• Important Dates to Remember
• Password/Log-In Info
• Personal Sections for Goals/Resolutions
• Monthly Calendar
• Kid's Daily Routine/Schedule
• Auto Maintenance Checklist
• Pockets to hold checkbooks/envelopes for date nights, cash, gas
• Finance/Bills Checklist
• Our Monthly Budget

The sections in red are the things I'd like to include in our binder right away. To narrow down the list a little until the binder gets fuller, I plan to use dividers labeled with the following:

• Emergency Contact Information
• CPR Illustrations for Infants
• Household Cleaning
• Menu Planning
• Household To-Do's
• Household Info (Important Dates, Password Info, Auto Maintenance)
• Blog Ideas
• Finances (Monthly Budget, Bill Payment Checklist, Pockets for our envelope system)
• Monthly Calendar
• Address Book

We already had a white binder and some pretty scrapbook paper so I just slipped some into that clear cover and Bam! Love it!

I also had these fun colored dividers lying around from our university days. I popped those into the binder and used my label maker to create tags for our household sections.

Here is an example of one of our charts we have for household cleaning. It's broken up by individual days of the week, weekly, monthly,  semi-annual and annual areas. This way, we can list by day what needs to be done around the apartment as well as things to be done monthly and throughout the year. I know they are a little plain, but color printing can get pricey sometimes, you know?

Our address book is its own entity, but I wanted to still include it in our household binder so everything is located in one place. Every member of the family knows what's in it and where it is.

 

We keep our binder in our Dining Room sideboard, right underneath our little office nook on the wall. As far as what's in the rest of those cubbies? Well, that's another project in the works!

 That's a wrap on our Household Binder project. I am really excited about how our binder is going to help us get organized and keep organized! How about those of you out there? What sort of small household projects are you working on?

Go, Baby, GO!

Oh boy, this past weekend was hoppin'. Sunday was a such a beautiful day, starting for us around 5:15am. We got ourselves ready, fed Maddy and got her dressed for the cold and windy day and we were out the door by 6:30am on the dot. Woo! Mitch has been training so very hard (for months now) to run his first half-marathon. Yes, we left early with plenty of time to get there and allow Mitch to warm up. No, we did not plan for the amount of traffic that over 6,000 people would make. So, thanks to my parents, we found another road into Oakland University's campus (with zero traffic, hooray) and parked. With literally 10 minutes to spare. Poor Mitch. He had to run a half mile just to get registered and start the race. Nevermind the additional 13.1 miles he then had to run! I am very proud of him, accomplishing one of his life goals...in 1:55:05!

 Little Miss enjoyed herself quite a bit, despite the cold and wind.

 Sprinting into the finish! Woot!

 Congrats Mitch!