Moving – Laundry and Dishes

October Goals Response

Hello everyone!

First, I would like to give a huge shout out to all of my followers and to everyone who has liked or commented on my blog. This past week I got a notification that Laundry and Dishes has officially gotten 500 likes and 200 followers! So thank you all so much!

Since it is now November, I decided to check in with myself to see if I accomplished anything on my list of goals from October.

Last month I made a list of things I hoped to accomplish in October. And today I will be revisiting that list to see if I actually did anything. If you’re interested you can check out October Goals here.

Here is how October went for me:

Blog Goals

alphabet arts and crafts blog conceptual — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

One of my goals was to do a recipe review because I had been putting it off for a really long time. I ended up reviewing an amazing recipe for Brocoli Beef.

My next goal was to post new content every week and I did it even though this whole month I have been struggling to find enough creative inspiration to sit down and write.

My next two goals were to be more creative and get better at photography. I’m not sure if I’m any better either of those two things but in at least one of my posts I had two pictures instead of one so I’m going to go ahead and say that I sort of am more creative and sort of am better at adding more photos to my posts.

Personal Goals

bright close up color colorful — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I also had four personal goals and I only did one thing on my list. I completely moved into our house and completely unpacked everything. It actually doesn’t look to shabey in here if I do say so myself. If you guys are interested in a home tour let me know in the comments and I will see what I can do.

My next goals were productivity, gyming it up and getting a pet. I was sort of more productive than I have been in recent months but I still had some days where I barely had any motivation to do anything. Some days I still have a cloud of sadness around my heart from losing the baby which makes it hard for me to want to do anything besides stay in bed and sleep all day. I think I have been struggling with some sadness and maybe even a little depression since August. But I am starting to be better and most days are good now which is such a relief.

As for working out, I was really good about it at the start of the month for like a week. But going to the gym has always been such a boring experience for me and I hate it so I stopped and started doing home workouts. I still hate those but at least I’m not bored anymore.

We still haven’t picked out our pet from the shelter because everything is on hold for hunting season. I also am a bridesmaid in a wedding in Tennessee in a few weeks and then Mike and I are going on vacation to celebrate our first wedding anniversary! So maybe we will get a puppy or kitten as an anniversary present to ourselves in December.

Financial Goals

money pink coins pig — Photo by Skitterphoto on Pexels.com

My only financial goal was to save $50 and I did it! I am so happy and thrilled that I was able to in spite of moving, mortgage payments, and buying a lot of things for the house that we needed but didn’t already have.

So overall all for the month of October, I think that I was about 50/50 split on being goal oriented and just having good intentions for my life. I have to say that I am ok with that because I don’t think that people can do everything they set out to do in a set timeline because sometimes life just happens.

So thanks for joining me today! I hope you liked this post and I will see you all next time!

* All photos in this post are from the Free WordPress Library

Poshmark: @ourlifeinmt

Help! We Accidentally Bought a House..

Hello everyone!

We are buying a house!

When we moved here, my husband and I were given two weeks to find a place to move into. We did and so far I don’t really care for the apartment we are currently in for a number of reasons. This post won’t be a list of reasons why I don’t like where we are currently living, it will serve as an informal First Time Home Owners Guide on How to Buy a House.

Step 1: Have a conversation with your partner. Here is how the conversation between my husband and I roughly went.

Husband: “Do you think we should buy a house?”

Wife: “Not really. I thought we wanted to move again in a year or two?”

Husband: “We do, but our rent currently costs more than a mortgage payment would, so do you think we should buy a house?”

Wife: “I guess if it will be cheeper, sure!”

Step 2: Go buy a house. We spent about a month or so trying to figure out how to buy a house before we realized we didn’t know what we were doing. Then we gave up and hired a relator.

Step 3: Tour all the houses your relater picks out. This is the most fun part because we would mostly just hem-and-haw about the housing options.

Step 4: Go to the bank. We had to do this because I realized that my husband was actually serious and not joking about wanting to buy a house.

Step 5: Settle for a house that is actually in your price range. We looked at a lot of houses that we could afford that needed a lot of work, but there were also some good ones. So we ended up picking the best most affordable one and its actually a pretty good house.

Step 6: Panic because you don’t have enough for the down payment and closing costs. My husband and I did this for about a week before we realized that we had enough money because people gave us money at our wedding and we had already been saving up to buy a house.

Step 7: Make an offer on the house. This was pretty complicated so unfortunately I have already forgotten most of the important things you are supposed to do during this part of the home buying process.

Step 8: Go to the bank a lot more. We ended up going to the bank a ton because there is a lot of paperwork and its hard to get everything done in one bank appointment.

Step 9: Have a home inspection and get your house appraised. I don’t really know how to explain what those things are, but they’re important so we did them. We learned that our house is livable and expensive.

Step 10: Realize that you need home owners insurance. This step made my husband and I a little nervous because we sort of forgot we needed it. But we found some pretty affordable quotes and everything ended up working out.

Step 11: Keep going back to the bank a lot. I think banks like paperwork and somehow they always seem to always have more no matter how times you’ve previously gone in.

Step 12: Move into your new house. Even though we haven’t moved in yet, I am not looking forward to this. I forgot how much work it is to move and how exhausting it is to unpack everything.

Step 13: Adopt a dog or a cat. This is probably the most important step in the home buying process because everyone needs a dog or a cat. We currently live in a pet free apartment so I cannot wait to move so we can adopt a puppy, dog, cat, or maybe all three!

Step 14: Live happily ever after! Or at least live happily ever after until you decide to move again.. We probably will end up moving again sometime in the next 5 to 10 years but I secretly am hoping that we don’t because its a lot of work and I’m pretty lazy.

So that is pretty much the story of how we became home owners.

* Photo from Free WordPress Library

Mike’s Birthday!

Hi everyone!

As you all know, Mike and are moving. A few days ago in the middle of frantically packing and trying to downsize by getting rid of nonessential household items, I remembered that it was nearly Mike’s Birthday!

It might sound silly, but his birthday marked an important milestone for us as a couple. We started dating in college three years ago and because we would go home on breaks between semesters, we always missed each other’s birthday.

So this year was a big deal. For the first time in our relationship I would be able to give Mike his birthday present in person. Naturally I wanted to surprise my new husband by making his cake instead of buying it, but since we are moving I decided to have a combination cake.

The next day while he was at work, I baked him a two layer red velvet cake from a mix and frosted it with store bought cream cheese frosting. I had already packed my cake stand and most of our dishes so I improvised by serving it to him on the back of a cutting board along with his gift and a card.

Later we went out with some friends which made Mike’s birthday the perfect way to finally get to celebrate together as a couple.

* Photo from Free WordPress Library

An Update on Our Move

Hello Everyone!

Before I get started with my newest post I would like to say that all of the pictures I have used in my blog so far are either from the Wikimedia free photo library, from the WordPress free photo library or my own. I thought I would add something about the photos I have been using so that nobody can say I have been plagiarizing or using someone else’s work unlawfully.

As you know, Mike and I are moving this Thursday and it dawned on me last night that I had forgotten about all the other things we needed to get done besides packing. So I made a list.

Panic Because You’re Moving in Seven Days and You Didn’t Get Anything Done

Talk to the current Landlord
Finalize the housing plans in the new town
Pay rent for the new house
Get a post office box in the new town
Update our forwarding address and cancel the old post office box
Cancel the WiFi
Eat all the food in the house that we don’t want to move with
Donate all food we didn’t eat to the local food bank
Donate all the clothes and other things we don’t want to move with to the local thrift store
Rent a U-Haul
Move all the boxes from the house to the U-Haul
Take out the trash (hopefully for the last time)
Clean the house (again, hopefully for the last time)
Stop blogging about moving and actually move
Clean the new house
Unpack everything into the new house
Get new WiFi
Furnish the new apartment
Go grocery shopping because we ate all the food we had before we moved and now we are starving

So now everyone is updated on how our move is going. I probably won’t post again until sometime after we are a little more settled into our new house.

* Photo from Free WordPress Library

House Hunting

Hello everyone!

Since moving into the middle of nowhere Montana, I have come to measure civilization by the number of Walmarts a town or city has. This may seem a little weird, but where we are currently living there are about ten small towns scattered throughout the abyss and the closest Walmart is a two and a half hour drive away. The most exciting part of this post is that we are moving to the closest town in the region with a Walmart!

This past Friday Mike and I left the house at about 7am and drove to meet with a couple of rental management agencies to tour a few apartments and houses. About the same time we left the house, the sun began to rise and I felt like we were driving into a new beginning.

Unfortunately house hunting ended up not being as exciting as I expected. Mike and I learned that there are only two sections in the whole town. One is called the “good” side of town and the other is called the “bad” side of town. Even with this distinction, it seemed to me that the houses in both sides of town had an equal amount of neglect.

Our first rental management agent took us to an apartment complex that had been the town’s first post office before being converted into a hotel. A while later someone decided to convert it into an apartment complex which was located in the “bad” side of town. The building was a little on the rickety side, but there was a one bedroom apartment available that was in better shape than the houses we toured in the “good” side of town.

We met with a second rental management agent who had a number of houses and trailers available, but decided not to show us because they were in pretty tough shape and she didn’t want us living in any of them. All the homes she managed were in the “good” side of town.

She did have a two bedroom house with an older woman living in the basement that we were a little interested in. If we decided to live there, we would be prohibited from walking too loudly because it would bother the lady downstairs. Another issue was that the previous renter had just moved out and had left the place in shambles so there was a lot of repairs that needed to be done before someone could move in.

After meeting with both people, Mike and I decided to talk things over. We went to Walmart for some packing supplies and then decided to drive home. Even though it was March there was a winter storm warning for later that day, but we hoped we would be able to beat it.

Boy were we wrong. It started snowing casually and then the wind started to howl. Before we knew it we were driving home in a blizzard. To make things even more exciting there was a semi-truck jack-knifed in the middle of the road. After about an hour, we finally made it about 10 miles down the road.

When we finally made it to the next town over, we had to stop at a gas station to scrap a few inches of snow and ice off our headlights, taillights, and windshield. We drove in the same conditions for another couple of hours and after that, the sun came out. Eventually it stoped snowing and we were able to drive back to the house without anything else exciting happening.

Now we are just waiting to see if there will have a house for us to move into next week.

* Photo from Free WordPress Library

Packing.. Packing.. And More Packing..

Hello Everyone!

I have some exciting news! Mike’s job is transferring him to another city!

I’m super thrilled for him because he has wanted to transfer for a few months. This is a huge success for him.

I however am not super thrilled to be packing the house again.

In case you haven’t read my previous blogs, Mike and I have only been married for about 3 months and we didn’t live together until after we were married. This means that I just spent the last three months moving all my things from Alaska to Montana. I also spent a ton of time decorating each room so we would have a home, not just a house.

Yesterday when he told me that we would be moving in a few weeks, I jokingly told him that if I had known that we would be leaving so soon after moving in together I never would have unpacked.

So the chaos of packing up a two bedroom home has begun.

And the adventure of house hunting will begin this Friday.

Unfortunately I have been procrastinating by writing this post so I think I had better stop editing and get something productive done.

I will keep everyone updated as our newest adventure unfolds.

* Photo from Free WordPress Library