Tea Bags& Hot Water: Getting Real

image via here

It's time to get real. I'm really stressed, worried, and have been grinding my teeth a lot (as a result of the aforementioned emotions). I'm about to pull back the curtain and reveal some big insecurities here on the old blog. Mr. SE and I accepted an offer to move to Denver, and within 4 weeks we were packed up and driving across the country. Sure, we owned a home in Nashville and had a solid network of friends. Surely, we'd be able to sell the house within a couple months and make new friendships. Well, the friendship part has come easily. People in Denver are SO nice; and not the sometimes nice of the south (I believe they call it polite) where they're nice to your face and not behind your back. Genuinely nice. While I miss my friends in TN dearly, I'm comforted by the relationships I've been able to create in the past 3 months. And things have been going great with my business, 3 brides on the books already for 2012 and we weren't expecting anything until spring 2013! But there's this one thing that's holding us back...our house.

Y'all. If our house doesn't sell in Nashville we can't close on this new house in Denver. It's like this big fat bully that's riding us piggyback. Our first realtor wasn't really pushing the house, and took a really passive approach to getting it sold. Look, we're not "thinking" about moving-- we packed up and moved across the country, so please bust your buns to sell my house! So after 60 days on the market, we withdrew our listing with that realtor and used a referral from our new realtor here in Denver. The new realtor had back-to-back visits in the first two weeks, but now it's slowed down a bit. Mr. SE thinks it's because of tax time, and that tours will pick up again when folks start getting their refunds.

And me? I'm frustrated, grumpy, and this is a completely sour topic. I'm worried that if anybody else asks me if we "at least have any offers" I'm going to bite their head off. Hello? If I had an offer we would've sold the house! Clearly you have no experience listing a home from 2008-2012. Kthanksbye. I'm trying to stay positive, I really am. But every day I'm dying to get a "showing" email or some sort of head's up that a sweet family is putting an offer on our home.

Here's where you come in. Please send us whatever form of encouragement suits your soul-- prayers, burying a St. Joseph statue (my mom suggested this), house selling dances, positive vibes, or any other ritual you prefer. Please just send it our way.

Thanks for allowing me to get real on here. It's not normally something that I do, since I try and keep the blog more upbeat. Promise I'll try and be back to fun posts tomorrow.

*Update** 

I added a link to our listing in case you know someone in the market in Nashville

http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/4272-Rachel-Donelson-Pass_Hermitage_TN_37076_M85816-05125

House Hunting: Mission Complete

Hi friends! I have some exciting news to share today...we got a house! I alluded to this over the weekend via Twitter, but I didn't want to jinx myself by writing about it until the contract was signed. We're moving into a neighborhood called Stapleton here in Denver. It's a master planned community with AWESOME amenities, and it's incredibly close to downtown. Coming from Nashville, the home prices were quite a shock, but we were able to find a home in our budget that we can grow into. There's a ginormous basement that we'll finish down the road, and we plan on being in this home for awhile to come.

Here's a picture of the same model we're building, but ours will have different colors. The colors were already decided for the build since they already have a permit for it (bonus-- it'll be finished earlier rather than later), and I think our exterior color palette will really make the house pop.

Body: coffee/cappuccino

Trim: dark olive/brown

Door & Accents: black

Here's the floor plan, I'm already excited about working with Abby from A Delightful Design to make this house a showstopper.

Some amenities in the community are below. We are bursting with excitement and cannot wait to move in come late July, early August.

 HGTV's 2011 dream home was in the neighborhood!

Rec Center with indoor pools, full size sports courts, & workout rooms 

25 miles of walking and biking paths, rock climbing wall and playground 

24 parks, skate park and dog park 

Library just for the neighborhood use

3 Elementary Schools (one is 2 blocks from our house)

Dedicated sledding hill

Miscellaneous: Weekend Wrap-Up

There are many things going on right now I couldn't even think of a creative title! We had quite the busy weekend over here in the SE house, and I'm excited to share several things with you.

On Friday, our cousin played game 1 of the state high school hockey championships. They won, and progressed to a second game on Saturday. Their game on Saturday was won in overtime, and Regis is now the state champions!

On Saturday before the hockey game (after having to work during the day), Mr. SE pulled the trigger on the car he's been wanting. It goes fast and it's all wheel drive-- he's in heaven!

Our last big push for the weekend was on Sunday, when we selected a house. The contract signing is tonight, and being superstitious as usual I don't want to jinx anything. I'll post more updates tomorrow once it's all official!

With everything that happened over the weekend it's no wonder I ended up with a whopping migraine yesterday. I'm happy to report that I'm feeling 100% better this morning, nothing that 6-7 migraine pills couldn't fix (gross).

House Hunting

Mr. SE and I are gearing up for another round of house hunting. Fingers crossed that our Nashville house sells sooner than later (send me an email if you know anyone who's looking). Denver has some great older houses with lots of charm, something that our first house just didn't have since it was built in 2005. Don't get me wrong, we loved living in new construction, but this time around we're looking for something a little different. Here's a preview of some of the cuties we'll be looking at:

Does anybody watch that show Property Brothers on HGTV? I'm addicted, and it even makes me wish (like 35%) that I lived in Toronto and could be on the show. I have dreams of buying a nasty (and cheap) old house in a great neighborhood and fixing it up. The only problem would be that I'm not a contractor, nor do I have experience in construction. However, I watch a TON of HGTV and my dad owns a construction business. Girl's gotta dream, right?

Le Sigh- making an old house have an open floorplan

Oh, just soaking in my antique claw foot tub

So...We Found A Place To Live

Hello friends! Thank you for continuing to follow--even though I've been lame and not posting as of late. Good news, Mr. SE and I successfully made the move to Denver. We had a wonderful night in Kansas City, and were able to spend time with my cousin and their 3 sweet kids. Now we're in Denver and staying with Mr. SE's aunt and uncle. Dever is a blast, and what fun we've had over the past couple days. We've already had 4 inches of snow!

And more importantly, we found a place to live! Mr. SE's uncle was so hospitable and took us on a tour of the city on Saturday morning. He covered all of the neighborhoods that we'd e interested in living in, and we got a good glimpse of the vibe for each area. Once back at home we hit Craigslist, Padmapper, HotPads, and the usual places looking for somewhere that was available for move-in asap. In out drive we passed by this gorgeous condo building, right next to City Park, that totally caught our eye. Although we're not in the market to purchase another home (at least until ours sells in Nashville), I thought I'd call and ask if they were available to rent any of their units. Luckily they said yes, and we were on the road for a site visit within minutes.

There were several units available for lease, two 2-bedrooms and one 1-bedroom. The 2 bedrooms were nice but a little out of our budget. This building had amenities and trimmings beyond our wildest belief! I never imagined that we could live somewhere like this! So we took the less expensive unit, and were able to work the into a 6 month lease, without increasing the per-month price. Excellent! The good news is that we're able to move in Wednesday, which is the exact day our moving truck arrives!

Luck? Blessing, I think! Here's some pictures:

What do you think? We're super excited! And the 6 month lease gives us time to decide where we really want to buy property again.

The MIA SE's

Sorry I've been somewhat MIA lately. I had a super busy weekend, starting with both a bachelorette and shower for this lovely lady. Don't worry, I have lots of pictures to post later. But I will say it involved a little of this:

Mr. SE and I have been awfully busy with something outside of the wedding world. I've been hesitant to post because I didn't want to jinx anything. But on Monday morning we were here, buying this.

The SE's are now homeowners! I'll take my tax credit now, thanks. We're currently having the house painted, and we'll be moving over the next week. And for my Nashville ladies- I will be hosting a cookout sometime soon!

House Hunt: Part 1,000

After almost a year of searching for our first home, we finally found something that both of us were thrilled about. We're putting an offer on this house today! Please send prayers and thoughts our way. As many of you know, purchasing your first home is a huge deal and pretty scary!

Yes- I will host the Nashville brides for a girl's night if we get it!

Introductions

Hello, my name is Sarah...and I've been a bad blogger. For those of you who follow me on twitter, you know that I a) have bronchitis b) just started a new job and c) am in the process of purchasing a house. Needless to say, things have been a little crazy over at Chez SE these last couple weeks. I try and keep up with everybody's blogs and tweets during the day, but I'm not able to post on my own.

So the posts will continue to be less frequent than before (ie 4 posts a day), but I'll try to post more now that I'm starting to get over the bronchitis. This is how my past three weeks have gone: 5:30 get home from work; 7:00 eat dinner; 9:00 go to bed; 6:00 am get up and do it all over again.

Mr. SE and I have been dealing with some complications on the wedding front, along with an ever decreasing budget. I'll be sure to fill you in on the details once things calm down. Please stay around- I promise I'll be back for some extremely fabulous posts next week. (ps- I lost a follower this week! Sad day!). In the meantime, here's some dresses I'm interested in. But wait- Miss SE, why are you posting dresses from DB? I thought you were going to hit up a fab salon where they served champagne and gushed over how beautiful you are. Yes, my friends, I was. That was before Mr. SE and I had a heart to heart about the budget and what is really important: our love, and honoring the friends and family that mean everything to us.

This weekend we're attending a wedding for the Goddaughter of Mom and Dad SE in Virginia. Mama SE is doing a reading in the ceremony- I'll try and take a picture. Before the wedding, mom and I are going to try on my FIRST wedding dress. I wanted to hit up DB first just to get a feel for the style that I wanted. While browsing their paper and online catalogue, I found some surprisingly lovely styles that I'm really looking forward to trying on. Here's some styles I like...

House Hunting: Part II

So this should actually be titled House Hunting: Part XXI. We've looked at so many houses, online and in person. This sort of thing is actually quite exhausting. Mr. SE and I found a house that we both love. It was purchased last year by a realtor and he fixed it up- nobody has lived there since he did the upgrades. Brand new carpet and cabinets. Hardwood in the kitchen, and professional paint job throughout. Duffie will be thrilled with the definitely "fencable" (is that a word?) yard, Mr. SE loves the deck and upstairs media room, and I love the TWO (yes, two) walk in closets in the master. The best part? It's under our price point. We can't wait to make and offer and try to make this our home. Mr. SE and I have some great ideas for decorating and I can't wait to chronicle those projects on my blog.