Archive for 2013

Oh. HAI.

Posted 24 Nov 2013 — by Mrs. Jenna
Category Abigail, blog bidnass, paparazzi, RAD

It’s been three months since I blogged last. I’m painfully aware. BlogHer Ad Networks made me aware by kicking me out, which is really okay since I wasn’t able to do much with the pennies I was making from them.

ANYWAY. Many things have happened in the last three months. I don’t know that I will necessarily write a big post about all of it…so how about a big list with an occasional picture thrown in? Sound okay? AWESOME.

  • We took our house off the market to take a break from showings and figure out our gameplan. We ended up hiring a different realtor.
  • I turned 33.
  • We put our house back on the market.
  • The hubs turned 38.
  • I visited my bestie on an Air Force base and stole an F-16. (partially not true.)
    IMG_2283
  • We took the house off the market again when showings slowed and we realized we like letting our house get messy and look lived in. We’ll put it back on the market again in the spring when things pick up again.
  • Abby turned 4 and nearly set her head on fire when blowing out the candles. (photo taken randomly at the same time as the flare-up. she was totally fine, and ended up in with an involuntary “Jennifer Aniston” birthday haircut.)
    Abbybirthdayhair
  • I got a haircut and went from this last Tuesday morning:HairTuesdayBefore
    To this Tuesday night:
    HairTuesdayafterAnd it feels awesome.
  • In other news this week, MamaPop closed it’s doors (although I haven’t written for them in months), and I signed on a deal to start writing for Dish Nation, a new entertainment website/tv show! I’m super stoked. In fact, the first post I wrote for them was featured on Huffington Post! (Cue total hysterics and near hugging of strangers when I found out.) I will be writing under their byline, but I’ll be sure to share which posts are mine when they’re live. :) I also saved all my posts from MamaPop and am trying to decide if I should post them here somewhere. It’s a possibility.

So…yeah. I’m sure I’m forgetting things. And other stuff is simultaneously happening that I’ll try to blog about when the time is right. But yeah. Maybe I’ll remember to keep this updated moving forward? Maybe?

At any rate, I’m glad to be back. I wasn’t ready to go away. Yet.

The Keyhole

Posted 20 Aug 2013 — by Mrs. Jenna
Category Abigail, motherhood

keyhole

Every night, Abby asks us to sit outside her door after we tuck her in. And every night, we pretend to and then go to bed.

Last night, Abby called our bluff. She called for one of us, asked why we weren’t behind the door, and when we said we were, she said…

“No, you weren’t. I looked through the keyhole and you were in bed.”

We were outsmarted by a 3 year old.

The day I cursed investment companies.

Posted 06 Aug 2013 — by Mrs. Jenna
Category house stuffs, other people are morons, The Hubs, uncategorized

I wanted to tell the story of our “offer” that fell through, mostly because when I was looking to it myself on the old interwebs, I couldn’t find anything about the company that wanted to buy our house…so…here it is.

A few weeks ago, I got a phone call from our realtor, letting us know that she got an email with an offer for our house. Odd for a few reasons…one was that the offer was from a corporation, and another being they’d never even seen our house. They were based out of Illinois, and offered us about $15K less than our asking price. CASH. It even came with a proof of funding letter. Not horrible, but too low for us to accept. Our realtor told us the company’s name, IH2 Property Illinois, so of course I immediately started Googling. I found that they’re owned by Blackstone Group, one of the largest investment companies out there, and are purchasing mass quantities of single family homes across the country. They invest a little money, and then rent the homes out. Immediately the hubs was against even entertaining their offer. While we couldn’t find any information about people who had sold their homes to them, we did find a bunch of stuff on Yelp and other sites – mostly people who thought they were a shitty group of landlords. While I wasn’t exactly happy with selling my house that I love to a company that was seemingly a bunch of jerks…I also wanted to sell my house. (Duh.) And without much else coming in for serious interest in our home, I talked the hubs into a counter offer.

We countered $13K more than their offer, they countered back at the halfway point…which was exactly what we needed to break even on our home. We were STOKED. It was finally happening! We signed their offer with a counter-proposal addendum attached with the newly agreed upon purchase amount, and sent it to them. The next day, they scheduled an inspection. The inspector came and went, and it came to my attention that IH2 had never signed our counter-proposal, nor had they sent any earnest money. That started to worry me, but our realtor assured us that everything was fine, and would let us know when she heard anything. On that Friday, we had been told that the Purchase Agreement papers and the inspection report had been delivered to the buyers and we would hear something on Monday.

Meanwhile, the hubs and I are quietly and excitedly talking about our moving plans, storage units, when to start looking for our home. We both tried not to get excited – we knew this wasn’t finished yet.

Monday rolls around, and finally, by 2pm our realtor calls. Her first words are “Bad news.” I almost fainted. Like, this COULD NOT be happening. Instead of everything being fine, they countered again. This time, at $30K LESS than our agreed upon purchase amount. THIRTY THOUSAND DOLLARS LESS. May I remind you that our agreed upon amount would leave us with nothing. Breaking even…but walking away with NOTHING. At first I panicked and thought that there was something MAJORLY wrong with our house. What could need $30K in repairs?!

Our realtor emailed their local agent (along with a counter from us for $10K than our agreed upon amount, because EFF YOU JERKS) who responded that they could not work with our counter offer, and that it was nothing that was found during the inspection, but they determined they would need to invest that much in the home in order for the deal to work with them. Okay…first? GREAT! Put $30K of work into my house! Guess what? I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO PAY FOR IT. Second? I hate you. He also mentioned in the email that if we ever want to “work with their offer” to contact them. Sure…when I have a dump truck of money for closing, I’ll give you guys a holler.

So…like I said in my previous post…dead in the water.

We’re pulling our house from the MLS on Thursday while we’re on vacation, and so that we can enjoy the rest of the summer without having to worry about house showings and stress and whatnot. We’ll probably decide over the next week if we put it back up again in September or wait until Spring.

I’m so over all of this. I’m seriously going to find a statue of St. Joseph and bury that shit in my front yard. HOUSE BE GONE.

And then I jinxed it.

Posted 29 Jul 2013 — by Mrs. Jenna
Category house stuffs, not so much, other people are morons

Was that really all it took? Me, vague-posting about the possible offer?

Because it fell through.

I have more to say about this whole situation, but I’m going to hold off until I don’t feel like smothering baby bunnies.

 

effthis

Because jinxing is a real thing…

Posted 29 Jul 2013 — by Mrs. Jenna
Category house stuffs

…no really.

So….things have been happening with our house, like…OFFER type things. Where we talk about closing dates and actually moving out and ALL THOSE THINGS. Yet, I don’t really want to talk about those things much, because we don’t have a signature yet to make all those things a reality. That signature is supposed to be coming at some point today. IF it’s coming. I don’t want to jinx it by talking about it too much.

And then there’s the house that I found on the interwebs that seems all too perfect that we’re going to look at tonight and I already kind of want to make babies WITH that house because it looks so awesome. But we’re technically not really ready to look at homes, no less put an offer on one because trying to save moar dollars for a down payment and OUR HOUSE TECHNICALLY DOESN’T HAVE AN OFFER SIGNED ON IT YET. And I don’t want to jinx that house by talking about it too much but I feel like I may already have talked about it too much.

Like I said in a previous post, selling this house is really making me feel all the feels. Today’s feelings include: ANXIETY. EXCITEMENT. HOME-AROUSAL. (<–that’s not a thing. but it is now.)

More when I have news about anything. Which hopefully is soon. I’m pretty sure I’m wearing out my phone battery just checking to make sure I didn’t miss a call in the last 30 seconds somehow.

Nope. Didn’t miss one.