Our New House!!!

We've spent three exhausting days looking for a new home in Chico.

FINALLY we found a real gem. It's out in the middle of a canyon. It's totally gorgeous and we love it. I'm sure we'll update more soon but I just wanted to share my pics!

View my Flickr photostream here: Flickr Photo Album: Our New House!

A Lesson in Photography

Ange and I have been looking for homes in Chico because DUH, we're moving there. Looking for a home has been exhausting but filled with silliness and giggles along the way. One of the funniest/worst things about the hunt has been looking at the pictures that people or realtors post. I mean, you want to sell the property...why wouldn't you think through the pictures you are taking and think whether or not you are featuring the best parts of the house and if you are enticing people to go for your property? I have picked some of the more ridiculous pictures that we've seen in our search to highlight what NOT to do.

Exhibit 1: Showing off a whole bunch of crap that is leaving with the current owner.

Hi, we don't care about your chair or ugly fake plants or dumb clock. Other than those things, this picture highlights nothing. A corner perhaps. 

 Or this one. Your curtains are ugly. And your rocking chair is creepy. That's all.

Exhibit 2: Way too close pictures that you can't figure out what is going on.

I think this is an entrance way? It's really close and there's no explanation attached.  WTF?

Exhibit 3: Pictures of random corners.

I don't know how many random corner shots there are out there. Great! Your house has corners. I'm so pleased. I was worried about finding a plethora of houses WITHOUT corners. Whew.

Exhibit 4: Someone who did not even try and clean their house.

I mean really? WTF IS THIS??? A picture of your crap by a window? GET. OUT.

Exhibit 5: Not knowing how the basic principles of a camera work.

 Camera flashes in a mirror is no good. And this really doesn't show me anything about the bathroom. Losers.

Exhibit 6: Terrible room pictures.

Great. A big white room with a door. Perfect. I want to move in tomorrow. 

Great! You have a shower curtain that presumably hides a shower! AWESOME!



Lights! You have lights!!! Sign me up.

Exhibit 7: Extra crusty things you should have fixed before listing. 

OMG, really? You have a burned up fireplace? At least paint it! Geesh!

Exhibit 8: I don't even know how to describe these ones...

 What the hell is this? I mean really, what the hell is it? A shed attached to a motorhome? In your backyard? What?

OMG, please enlarge this picture and look at the stuff on the crusty built-in wardrobe. I was seriously dying.

 

 This picture goes along with the one above. Again, please enlarge. Read the sign behind the pool. Dyyyyyyying. Srsly. 

This ends our tour for the day. Please refer back to this post when you are thinking of listing your house. Please.

Old School Style: Fort Building

Ange made plans to go hang out with her bff Prem so I of course made plans to hang out with my bff Leslie. She had to work all day and I didn't so she put me in charge of making plans for the evening. I hate making plans. But since I had all day I decided I could tackle the job. I decided if I made a big list of things we commonly do, then at least I could force Leslie into helping me make decisions. Knowing my sister's fondness for things organized and also goofy I came up with a "Things to do Ballot." I can't lie, it is awesomely nerdy. 

You'll notice near the bottom of the list  I had "Build a cool blanket fort." My sisters and I are pretty much the champions of blanket forts. I think we made approximately 786,570,808,786 forts in our childhood. Leslie and I had been talking about our forts for some time and we had mentioned that we should totally make an adult sized fort soon. BFF night seemed like the perfect idea.

After we did some of the other activities on our list we headed to her house to begin fort building. When we got to her house we decided that we needed some supplies. Namely, pins of some sort to reinforce the blankets and brownie mix. Because duh, what else do you do in a fort?

So we went to Walmart to get some supplies. 

We found some binder clips (which we didn't end up using) and some clothes pins. Both were $1.88. A good investment. We also got our brownie mix and some whip cream, because...yum. We got home and my dorky sister remembered she'd used the last of the eggs the day before. Then I wanted to to kill her. But instead we went back out to get eggs. We didn't want to go to Walmart so we decided to hit the gas station because gas stations often have rations that you would need on a short moment's notice. Well that was a bust. Milk, cream cheese, ice cream...no eggs. Then we drove by the liquor store. Yeah, no luck there either. Then we went to another gas station. GZUS, why doesn't anyone have eggs??? So we went to Meijer. Sigh. We finally got home and mixed the brownies really quick, popped them in the oven and then started fort building. 

She's a maniac with the brownies.

Our starting materials.

I was really worried about ripping the ceiling fan down. It didn't stop me, but I worried. 

Leslie made full use of her clothes pins.

Zoe had no idea what was going on.

Our first peak. 

 

At a certain point you have to maneuver carefully to arrange blankets. 

Lots of giggling ensued throughout the 45 minute building experience. 

The cord to the lamp provided a great storage place for our emergency fix it pins inside the fort.

Unintentionally the fort became more teepee like. We left it because it was funny. 

We decided we needed to do some union inspections in honor of Clint. 

 

One thing we didn't have in the olden days: a ginormous flat screen tv. Funsies.

 

The final view from one side. 

The final view from the other side.

Leslie and Zoe were ready for movie & brownie time. 

And then Clint the ruiner of everything good came home and almost destroyed everything. Luckily we shrieked enough that Godzilla was paralyzed and repairs were quickly made.

Clint joined us in the fort to watch the end of Unstoppable. And then promptly fell asleep. Lame-o. 

Yay for for building!!!

Chapstick

I LOVE chapstick. Maybe more than love. Maybe I'm addicted to chapstick. My friends and family would probably say so. I could totally ween myself off of it if I wanted, but why would I want to do that? Chapstick makes your lips so soft and smooth. Who wants dry crusty lips? Not me that's for sure. My favorite kind of chapstick is Chapstick brand in mint flavor. If I have no chapstick I'll use pretty much anything but given a choice, mint is the way to go. My least favorite kind is plain. Especially no name gross plain kind. Yuck. I like a firm chapstick too. Blistex is way too smushy. I think it has higher petroleum content. Chapstick brand is a nice consistency. It doesn't squish all over your lips when you use it. Two of the worst things that happen with chapstick is if you leave it in your pocket and send it through the wash. If it just gets washed it gets water-logged and even if you let it sit out to dry it's never the same. If it goes through the dryer then it melts all over your clothes and leave permanent little grease spots. Ange is the worst at leaving chapsticks in her pockets. Grr. The other worst thing is if you leave your chapstick in your car. It gets all melty and if you try to use it before it cools down it smashes all over your lips. If it's not sitting upright then it oozes all over the tube and gets all deformed. Bleck. I go through about 1.5 chapsticks a month. It's worth it.