Sunday, August 22, 2010

New home, new start, old routines

August has been...interesting. In mid July we were told our home ( we rented) was finally being sold and that the closing was on 9/30/10. Ok no biggie and the new home process was started. Then, on July 31 we rcvd a letter stating the new owners wanted us out in 30 days. Nice. I thought that couldn't happen until the closing? Funny part is the closer we got to leaving the worse the house was getting fast. Almost like our things were holding it up? lol. I know the new owners are going to do a lot of modifications.. i hope they are really prepared for that house.. as far as I know there was never an inspection... and I think an inspection would all but condemn it.

It really was not a hardship to leave that house of horrors. The only reason we stayed so long was to improve our credit score before searching, so that we would have good options. So much for waiting for a better time, lol. After 2 very long and argumentative weeks we did find a place we both liked. For the last week I've been doing the bulk of moving while working as well. I'm not surprised that I'm so tired, lol.

The new place is bigger and to my joy.. has a dining room! Yay!!!! no more 3foot sq kitchen 'table' where you only had room for plates and cups. I also have a kitchen and bathroom circa 1950's complete with avocado green oven and pink tub and sink, lol. No more carpets, all hardwood floors and just nicely laid out and roomy. JP can run in circles from living room - to kitchen- to dining room - to living room and he's loving it, lol. His room is huge and I'm loving it as ALLLLL his toys except the train table will be in there.

It's also only a few miles from my mom... instead of being 30 minutes or so.. I'm now only about 6 minutes. She's alone now as her companion is having a lot of serious health issues and he's now in a nursing home. I like that I'm closer ..just in case. After last years huge snowstorms, I hated being so far away and not able to help... being this close ( i drive by on my way to and from work) makes me feel better.

In a previous life, many years ago, I had a small apartment with a dining room... and at the time was well known for calling people up and saying 'hey! I made some new recipes, c'mon over". Never huge parties, but frequent entertaining. I've missed that with the old house. It was just not easy to entertain with more then 1-2 extra people making it feel over crowded.

The new place is currently decorated in Early American Box.. but I knew I'd be doing an official 'Sunday Dinner' tonight, even if just for us. I had found a gorgeous dining table on craigslist and was set to go. We had my IL's up and they wanted to give us more time to settle in, but I told them I'd be making dinner anyway and there was more then enough. It was so nice to entertain again, lol...although I did forget to turn the oven off for a bit and couldn't figure out why the kitchen was still so hot, lol.

Thats another nice thing about this apartment. Heat and hot water are included- yippee! in the old house I all but stopped cooking because the hot water leak in the bathtub drained the propane ( water heater was a propane heated version). Our monthly bill was about $150 a month for propane. Now I can cook all I want with the propane.

oh and for any that know my stories about the kitchen in the old place? there is NO CARPETING in this kitchen! I have a normal kitchen floor again and its great :)

tonight I made:
an appetizer tray of:celery and blue cheese dressing/assorted olives/tomato and feta bruschetta
main course was:
lasagna
tossed salad
peas and onions with prosciutto
dessert was brownies and cookies provided by my MIL

it was a very nice dinner and Joe enjoyed it so much he suggested his parents come up every Sunday - yeaaaah.. both his mom and I looked at him and told him he was nuts, lol. I do however plan to have a nice Sunday dinner each week unless we are invited out otherwise, lol.

my meal plan for next Sunday is in progress.... right now it's:
Crusted Salmon with mustard

and that's about it at the moment, lol. I want to avoid stopping for any additional ingredients so thats part of my challenge. I think my side dish will be a basic tossed salad with another pasta salad of some sort. I tossed the rice I had at the old place... but rice is inexpensive. Oh wait! I have a seasoned tube of wild rice! that's a perfect compliment to salmon. I've invite my mom over for next week and think I'll also ask my SIL and niece. The piece of salmon i have is huge, so thats not a problem. there is a farmers market down the road on thurs evenings...maybe i'll find an inexpensive veggie side dish idea.

No comments: