800,000 for that?

Sam and I experienced our first official 'house hunting' day today. We met with our realtor "Doug". He seemed nice enough and he used to be a teacher, then a principal. Seemed like a plus to me (being a teacher myself).

We set out in his Land Rover to look at a couple properties in Greenwich. The first one was old and nasty and had little yapping dogs in little boxes in the majority of the rooms. I did not realize (until today) that (in Greenwich) old + nasty + asbestos + random third floor apartment = 850,000.

The second house, also in Greenwich was a cheepie at 799,000 but it did not include the backyard, no, if you would like the backyard it will be 1.3 million.

At this point we decided to give up on Greenwich.

We headed to the other side of the tracks...Stamford. It's a bigger city, but definitely younger average age and much more affordable. It has a happening downtown and more diversity.

SO we looked at a very nice house on a cute street, it was just redone. It was an older house so it still had charm (hardwood floors, molding), but it had been updated. We were hopeful...until we walked up stairs. The main master toilet was shit stained! Nasty! We ran past the other potential buyers there for the open house and headed to the next 'winner'.

Next house was built in 1986 with all the stylishness that the 80's had to offer.

I think I blocked out the next house due to the smell.

Last, we looked at a house that was large and I was hopeful. We happened to be about 5 minutes early and an older man answer the door, in his underwear, and let us know we were 5 minutes early and that we should have a walk around the outside for about 5 minutes while he gets ready. We should have run away at that point.
The inside was not that bad, old and poorly decorated, but not that bad. I found out at this house that for a room to be called a bedroom it does not actually have to fit an actual bed or a person (of normal size) standing upright. There was also a very arthritic barking/moaning dog that followed us around. The elderly couple that had lived there for god knows how long went from room to room with us detailing the history of what family members lived there and for how long and how they had arranged the furniture. They had just bought a luxury condo in a beautiful retirement community in Florida. We wish them (and their dog) well.

sew good...

it was my birthday last week and i am still raking in the gifts. i love birthdays!

sam just gave me my gift yesterday. he gave me a brand new state of the art sewing machine! i love it.

i have been using sam's mom's old machine that she had for about 30ish years. i have loved using it. it is so simple and i knew everything about it. i had that 'they don't make 'em like they used to' attitude, so why should i get a new one?

so when i saw this new machine i was nervous...but in just a few hours of playing with it, i had the thread loaded and was sewing. it was so simple and it even threaded the needle all on its own! they have made some amazing technological advances in sewing machines in the last 30 years.

i love my new machine. it is beautiful and simple and amazing.

my friends can expect a lot of sewn gifts in the coming months...especially if someone has a baby ( you know who!).

i've got to go sew now...