Looking for a home and reviewing our options

My husband and I have a goal to be in a house before or soon after our new baby comes.  We are currently in an apartment, which is just the right size for our family of 3.  Not the right size at all for a garden.  What is the point of marrying a man who loves to garden if you don't have a big huge yard to plant things in??

We searched for homes before moving in to our apartment, but we couldn't find anything that we liked, or we were outbid by companies wanting to tear down the one house on acreage and build 3 or 4 houses on the land.  We didn't find anything in time for our wedding and we needed somewhere to live, so here we are.  Apartment life is not for us... heck, city life is not for us.

Since we are looking at buying our first home as a couple, we are looking into a lot of different things, such as maintenance.  In the apartment, nothing is really our problem.  If anything breaks or needs repaired, we just call the handy man and he comes and fixes it.  Nothing belongs to us and so it's nothing to worry about.  Water heater goes out? Doesn't cost us a dime.  Window gets stuck? They come and fix it the same day.  Dryer vent clogged?  Not our dirty work.  It's very convenient, but like I said, this life isn't for us. 

Before we met, I owned a condo.  It's long gone by now, but it was similar in a way.  All of the things inside were my problem, but all of the things outside were taken care of by a friendly little old man who lived a few doors down.  Porch light bulb gone bad?  That's on the outside.  Gate to the fence won't shut properly.  Outside.  Window breaks?  They covered that, too.  My gutters were cleaned, my grass was mowed, and the water hose was insulated when the weather got cold.  Again, very convenient, but not for us. 

The problem is that I don't really know how to do those things.  My husband does.  He learned from his dad.  I think it's one of those man to man things.  He has even climbed up on my parents' rooftop and cleaned their gutters.  He has mowed their lawn.  He has insulated their water hose spout.  He's even weeded my moms garden. He's a manly man, and that is great because I am much better at taking care of things inside the home and he is great at taking care of things outside the home... and also large appliances. 

Without him, I don't know what I would do.  I have a whole collection of Bob Villa books back from before their was the internet.  I could read those and learn how to take care of things myself.  That is how I learned to change out a toilet... in theory. I could get one of those Home Warranty set ups.  It's like a program where they take care of your appliances and household things.  I could sign up for to get helpful hints via twitter or Facebook.  I wonder if they have a tickler service.  Like how my car flashes little lights at me when I need an oil change or a tire rotation.  My TV tells me when I need a new bulb.  Maybe there is something like that for houses?

I don't know how the Hubs keeps it all straight in his head about what needs to be done when.  He's not only in charge of the house, he's in charge of the cars, too.  My car's little tickler thing comes on and I have to take it in to get the light turned off and not get any of the services done because he gets them all done early.  It's really nice to not have to worry about things getting taken care of.  I wonder if he feels the same way about dinner?

Does he think, "It's so nice not to have to worry about dinner and just know that when I walk in the door it's going to smell like some  kind of delicious food in there." or "I have no idea how my clothes get from the laundry basket back into the closet, but I am so glad that they do.  I never run out of pants and I always have such a selection!"  I think he probably does.  We make a pretty good team.

Being Energy Efficient

I was watching an episode of Bazaar Foods yesterday that was filmed in Iceland.  I learned that the majority of Iceland's homes are heated using geothermic energy - or heat and energy that comes from the ground.  I first learned about this when I was working at the bank and I opened a business account for a group that did this kind of work.  I found it really interesting!  

Right now I am living in an apartment and looking for a house to buy.  I know that when I finally find a home, one of the first things I will do is have a home energy audit.  We plan on buying an older home - maybe even a fixer-upper.  The newer homes just don't have the kind of yard we are looking for.  My husband and I already have plans for a big beautiful garden and we take a lot of the yard space and layout into consideration whenever we look at a house.  So far, the only things that come close to meeting our needs are older homes.  

I like older homes and I think they have a lot of character, but they can be drains when it comes to energy.  For example, did you know that it's not even legal to use aluminum trim around windows anymore?  True.  A little fact I picked up when the only job I could get was selling windows door to door (terrible job, FYI). The reason builders can't use that anymore is because there is way too much energy that escapes through those old aluminum window trims.  

Most of the houses we have looked at will need the windows replaced if we want to get up to code and save money on heating and cooling. And this is just the info that I have picked up living my every day life.  I truly don't even know the half of it.  But sometimes knowing what you don't know is just as important as knowing what you do know.  I DO know that we will be ready to schedule a home energy audit very soon after moving into our new home - whichever home that may be. 

We are looking for something out in the country-ish, but that is getting really hard to find.  With the suburbs encroaching on  rural boundaries more and more, we are finding that houses on land are selling quickly to developers who demolish the old house and plant a million more on the lot.  They can cram 4 or 5 houses where 1 country farm house used to stand.  We are hoping that as winter approaches, the buying will die down and we will have a better chance at finding something.

Hotel Supply at PeachSuite

While planning my upcoming honeymoon and reading several reviews for hotels and restaurants in our honeymoon location, I found a website called Peach Suite.  This website is a Hotel Supply Online store.  Ever wonder where hotels get their stuff?  Well you can check it out on this website.  It's not only very interesting to see how things are purchased, but the website is so easy to use and upfront that you can see the prices for everything as well. I immediately checked to see how much the  towels were, since I know several people who are notorious for swiping them out of their rooms.  At $116.06 per dozen, I decided I would not be contributing to this crime.  If twelve people do it a day, or even a week, you can see how it can add up.  

Of course I was curious to see if I could get in on this hot towel discount action.  I added the towels to my cart and went to check out.  Yes, you too can be the proud owner of one dozen hotel towels for the low, low price of $116.06, and you can do it honestly.  No more sneaking around with contraband towels in your luggage.  I was also impressed that they boast a pretty speedy delivery time.  As I said before, easy to use, and upfront. 

Oh, oh, oh! And they have some seriously swanky furniture, too!  I was checking out the Hotel Bar Supplies section because I'm in the market for some bar stools.  They also have some pretty fancy items for tending your bar as well, but the bar stools were really impressive.  They were the kind you would find in a fancy hotel lobby, but they also had the kind that you typically find in a suite as well. 

I think they are mostly an Atlanta Hotel Supply company, since that seems to be where they are based, but it looks like they are able to ship all over. I had read an article once that suggested that people looking for furniture go to hotels that were doing remodels and take the old used stuff for cheap or for free.  Fortunately, I am out of the phase in my life where I try to think of new ways to spruce up top ramen, and I'm able to buy most of my furniture new.  So why not get my stuff where the fancy hotels get theirs? 

Handmade Wallpaper

Since I went to visit my family in Mississippi, I have a new appreciation for wallpaper.  I remember when I lived there, every home had either wood paneling, or wallpaper, or both.  The house I lived in had flocked wallpaper, which I always loved.  

Hurricane Katrina destroyed nearly every home I was familiar with and they all had to be rebuilt.  Guess what... they left out the wallpaper.  Wallpaper was always something that I considered necessary to have a Southern home.  In fact, I thought it would make any home look a little more country. 

That was before I stumbled across this on the web: Handmade Wallpaper. Seriously?  Yes. 

I have to say that the first wallpaper style I checked out on their webpage even resembled wood grain.  The best of both worlds!  But as you cruise through the website you'll see that they can make wallpaper (yes, they make it by hand) to suit any taste. 

The collections are absolutely stunning!  They have some tripped out psychedelic styles, some that I am pretty sure are flocked, and they have some truly elegant designs that look very Victorian with filigree and swirls.

I think that the style that I like the most are the more earthy looking designs.  Some of them are reminiscent of leaves and nature - especially the textured wallpaper. 

As I was looking around the website I also saw that they do screen printing on the wallpaper as well.  That means that if you have a business, you could have your logo printed on wallpaper for your office or reception area.  Now that is brilliant!  I never would have thought of that, but it makes so much sense to offer that to businesses!

Just thought I would share my recent web findings!

Backyard Improvements

 Last year my mom wanted to do some improvements on her back yard.  One thing she really wanted was to have a paved path from the patio to the back fence.  There is a gate in the back fence that leads to a field.  The field is low lands used by the farmer that live behind them as drainage for his fields.  Sometimes, about every 3 or 5 years, he grows mint out there, but normally it's just grass that he rolls into hay bales and sells.  He doesn't mind at all that several people in the neighborhood use the land for walking their dogs and jogging.  So when a windstorm took out the old fence and my parents had to rebuild, they arranged to have a gate installed that would lead them directly into the field where they walk the dogs every day.

The gate is located in the middle of the fence line, directly at the end of the deck.  Since my mom has a beautiful and plentiful flower garden along the deck, it makes a lovely path for the walk to the gate.  And since the dogs and my parents walk to the gate every day for their walk, a little path is just what was formed... a little dirt path.  My mom wasn't happy about that at all and she resolved to make a path out of Paving Stone.  She hunted around for which kind to use.  Once, on TV, I had seen some that were just a mold for cement.  You just use them almost cookie cutter like.  They were big pieces of mold that made the path look like it was cut into several smaller pieces.  I thought it was really cool because it was so easy.  You don't have to figure out how to arrange the stones, you just cookie cutter them out.  The problem was that they were all exactly the same and it didn't look natural.

My argument was, who cares?? Some people use Patio Pavers to make entire patios and those don't look natural, but they do look beautiful.  Mom wanted something the looked at least a little natural.  We shopped for a couple of days and one day we found exactly what we wanted.  Some absolutely beautiful paving stones at Lowe's mispriced.  I snapped a photo with my phone and we asked management if they wouldn't mind selling the product at the incorrect price.  My mom said she felt like it was dishonest, or at least unkind, to try to weasel savings out of an honest mistake.  I told her we could just ask, and they would almost certainly feel obligated to say yes, and then we wouldn't be the people who tried to cheat them.

Mom asked for the department manager.  She explained that she knew the item was mislabled and that the price was incorrect.  Then she asked if he wouldn't mind selling it for the incorrect price since that was how it was marked.  He didn't want to say yes, you could tell.  He said that the price was very, very off and it was beyond his ability to approve such a big discount.  He had to call the general manager, who quickly approved the price drop and told them how to apply the discount at the register.  I thought it was a tactful way to go about it.  In the end, mom got enough paving stones to make two paths, not just one.  And they are still here today a year later, making a perfect path to the back and side gates.

Drip Irrigation

 Does anyone out there use a drip irrigation system? My mom uses some drip hoses or soaker hoses to water her flower garden all over the back yard, but does this count as drip irrigation?  My mom has these hoses that she has run all over the yard at the base of her plants.  She turns the water on and the hose gets soaked all long the its length.  The moister is then soaked up by the soil and then of course to the roots of the plants.

The reason she uses this is because

1. It saves water by delivering the moister directly to the root area of the plant
2. It saves the plants from getting burned by having water on their leaves
3. It saves time because she can turn it on and walk away without having to stand there and water the plants herself. 

She has been using the soaker hoses for about two years now and she is really happy with them.  She can move them around if she rearranges her garden and  she uses adapters that allow her to hook up multiple hoses in the front yard an back.  One problem that she has had is that the hoses don't always deliver consistent water their entire length.  The parts of the hose which are closer to the water source get wetter, and the plants at the end of the hose furthest from the water source don't get as much.

So my question is if she gets more permanent drip irrigation supplies will it work better?  It seems like it would.  I'm also wondering if they will be easy to move around.  They surely can't be as easy and flopping a hose to the other side of the garden, but are they permanent?  Also, are their kinds of drip irrigation systems that go underground?  I'm sure those are more permanent, but I was just curious. I also wonder if there is a way to put plant fertilizer directly into the drip irrigation system.  It seems like there should be.

I suppose if you really wanted to get fancy with it, you could set your drip irrigation system up with fertilizer or plant food and then set it on a timer so that you really don't have to worry about it.  Sometimes my mom forgets to turn off her soaker hose.  It hasn't ever drowned any plants, and since it's a soaker hose, it doesn't really use up too much water, which is the reason she got it in the first place.  If you had everything set on an automatic timer though, that would be even easier.

How to Enjoy Your Patio

 The weather has been so nice and warm that we have been spending a lot of time out doors as a family.  We have been grilling at least two times a week and yesterday we all sat outside and drank coffee after dinner, just looking at the sunset.  We talked about how nice it would be if we could do things like this all year round.

My grandma is visiting from Mississippi, just like she does every year.  Soon, she will be joined by my Aunt Pam, who also visits every year.  They like to spend the Summer in our mild weather.  Well, it's mild to them.  On Summer nights in Mississippi if you want to enjoy a drink on your patio, it is probably an iced tea, and if you want to sit out there very long, you need a fan.  Aunt Pam and Uncle Danny have a huge covered back porch that is the size of some people's whole yards.  They have 2 ceiling fans hanging from the cover which they keep on to blow a little bit of the warm humid air around trying to make it a little more tolerable.

In Mississippi, the challenge is trying to keep cool throughout most of the year, but for us in Washington State, that isn't so.  Here in the Pacific Northwest we are challenged with keeping warm.  Most people stay indoors throughout the winter, but not us.  We have an amazing view of Mt. St. Helens AND Mt. Hood from our back yard.  There is nothing like seeing a beautiful mountain lit up all pink and purple and orange in a glorious sunset.  But how do you enjoy your yard when it's freezing out?

We took a cue from our family in Mississippi.  If they can try to cool off their porch, why can't we try to heat ours up?  We also got the idea from a restaurant that we like to go to.  The restaurant is so busy that the door is always opening and closing, and they have trouble keeping the heat in and the cold air out.  The tables near the door can get especially chilly.  One winter we all went for some hot soup for dinner and while we were seated at the door, the management brought over outdoor patio heaters  to help keep us warm!

What an awesome idea!  Mom and dad are looking into getting one of these heaters to use in the winter months so that we can still be outdoors.  I can just imagine it now.  A cool and crisp fall evening with my family, maybe sitting around a fire pit roasting marshmallows as the stars twinkle, and not even having to worry about getting to cold.  It sounds great!