These are a few of my favorite things

You know what I love about summer? Summer dresses! It's the only way I really keep cool in this heat. I've never been a big fan of shorts or skirts, so dresses are the way to go! Here are some of my favorites from Forever 21.

Packing Sucks

So we, okay let me rephrase, Brian started a little bit of packing today. We've been procrastinating because well, packing sucks.


Here you can see that Gizmo likes to watch us pack.



He doesn't like to BE packed though...


He'd much rather play with a ball that's too big for him instead.





This is how Gizmo feels about packing


I agree...

MASH

Remember that game M.A.S.H. you would play as a kid? Well play it online right here!

I love the way mine came out. Totally awesome!

You will marry Ryan Reynolds.

After a wild honeymoon, you will settle down in San Diego in your fabulous Apartment.

You will have 2 kid(s) together.

The family will zoom around in a pink Dodge Nitro.

You will spend your days as a makeup artist, and live happily ever after.

it wasn't bad the second time around either:

You will marry Brian.

After a wild honeymoon, you will settle down in Los angelas in your fabulous Mansion.

You will have 0 kid(s) together.

The family will zoom around in a red lifted truck.

You will spend your days as a SAHM, and live happily ever after.

Okay I'm having way too much fun now.

House Update!

How was everyone's weekend?

Ours was good. Not long enough of course, but good. We had inspections Saturday. It went well. Nothing major, all little tedius things that the inspector put on the report as a "courtesy". That's great news and such a relief! Then we had a day of shopping. Hit up Home Depot, Floor Decor, Ikea and even the Sears Appliance Outlet! We only ended up buying some floor board/mouldings though.

Also, my LO called Friday and said, "So what are you doing Monday?" I replied, "Working, why?" He said, "docs are ready and I want to get you in to sign!!" AWESOME! Unfortunately Monday afternoon doesn't work since I'm stuck at work, but we scheduled a closing for Tuesday morning! This is so exciting. It's finally happening. In a week (or less) I will be a H.O.M.E.O.W.N.E.R.!

WOO HOO!

So guess what?! I got a call from my excited real estate agent today, telling me that our seller signed docs have been executed!!!!!!!!!!!! (sorry but that deserved a lot of exclamation points). FINALLY! After a month of waiting around. That means we can finally do our inspections (we have a 10 day period to have them done anyway). Dun dun DUN!

I scheduled the appointment for this weekend! I have to admit, I'm feeling a little anxipus about inspections after all the trouble we've gone thru, but I'm trying to stay positive.

Cross your fingers, toes, etc. that the inspections will go well and there won't be anything major wrong.

Happy Father's Day!

These are the only pics I have uploaded of my dad and I. Happy Father's Day, Dad. I love you!

You've Been Tagged

I found this little tagger on the This Young House blog. And I'm bored, so I thought I'd join in.

The rules: Answer the following questions about yourself. At the end of the post you pass on the questions to other bloggers and list them. Then write them a comment telling them that they’ve been tagged and ask them to read your blog.

1. What did you do 10 years ago?
Oh goodness. I was 15, so just starting high school, trying out for Spiritline, driving my mom crazy, and starting my rebelious teenager years. Yikes.

2. Five items on your to-do list:
1.) Close escrow on home.

2.) Clean new house and prep for paint and carpet removal.

3.) Remove carpet. Replace living aread with wood, and replace carpet in rooms with new carpet.

4.) Move out and clean rental.

5.) Refinance car loan.

3. Snacks I enjoy:
Fat free yogurt with fresh strawberries and chopped raw almonds, a handful of trailmix, reduced fat wheat thins, fresh fruit, fresh raw vegis with hummus or FF ranch dip. Anything easy and work accessible.

4. What would you do if you were a billionaire?
1.) Have a heart attack

2.) pay off all debt (mortgage, cars, credit cards, etc.)

3.) quit my job, and work at MAC part time while I go back and finish school. Go back to school at Carstons or the new Paul Mitchell school here in town.

4.) visit the plastic surgeon for some lipo and new boobs. haha

5.) invest and save some money of course.

6.) Have the hubs get his contractors license and start his own company.

7.) Have the perfect, stress-free life. Ahhh. That sounds so nice.

5. Places I would live:
San Diego, Seattle. I'd love to get the hell outta Phoenix some day. I'd love to live somewhere near the ocean. Somewhere where it rains. Still dreaming.

6. Bloggers I am passing the challenge onto are (if you haven’t already been tagged):

House Update

After all the drama with the wall, it's fixed! Along with a few other minor things that needed to be fixed for the lender (for example putting a cover over some wires where a ceiling fan used to be). Nothing major. Thanks Jason, for helping with drywall!! Can't wait for you to retexture the ceilings when we remove the popcorn. hee hee!

Also, Brian went by the house Saturday and there is finally a SOLD sign on the for sale sign! YES!! We will pose for a picture with it soon. Didn't have time to go back over there this weekend.

Tae Kwon Do

Taekwondo (태권도; IPA: /tɛkwɒndoʊ/) is a Korean martial art. Taekwondo is the national sport of South Korea. It is also regarded as the world's most popular martial art in terms of number of practitioners,[1] and sparring, or kyeorugi, is an official Olympic sporting event. In Korean, tae 태 跆 means "to trample with the foot"; kwon 권 拳 means "fist"; and do 도 道 means "way"; so taekwondo is loosely translated as "the way of the foot and fist".

A couple months ago I started Tae Kwon Do.

I'm taking the class at my Dad's Martial Arts Academy, so it's free.99, which is a plus! I didn't think I'd like it cause all my life I always thought it was so dorky, but I actually like it a lot! It's a great workout, and I'm also getting my flexability back from my dancer days.

Anyhooters, this past Saturday in the middle of moving (literally) I took time out to test for my yellow belt. That's right bitches! I'm a big bad yellow belt now! Watch out or I will round house kick you in the face! haha! I try to practice my skillz on the hubs but he's still too quick for me. I'd love to kick his ass. At least once. The dude is strong (all in a playful way of course).

Oh and here's a really embarrassing/funny story for you... Okay, so I tested at the Academy at 12:30pm. Then at 7PM I had to go back for graduation to get my belt. Well, they have the graduation at a school nearby, because the academy just isn't big enough for all the parents. There are a lot of students, mainly children. Some of the cutest kids, by the way. Like, little ones! They call them teh "Little Dragons". So cute! Anyway, I'm on my way out and I stop by the bathroom to wash my hands - they're just so dirty from moving and the handsoap at home was packed in some random box. So I run into the bathroom, and start washing my hands. Then some dude walks in, and I think WTF? Then I look up and I can see a urinal, with a guy pissing in it in the mirror. Then I really think "WTF?!". I say, "Oh.My.GOD! I am in the WRONG bathroom, aren't I? I am so sorry." The dude just chuckled and said, "oh it's okay." and I ran like a bat out of hell out of there. I was SO embarrassed!

Recipe: Turkey Tostadas

Pretty easy recipe. I like finding healthier ways to make my favorite foods. I'm a huge mexican food junkie, so in order to shed some poundage, I like to create my own healthier ways of my favorite mexican dishes. So instead of heading to Top Shelf or Taco Bell, I make my version at home. Saves money and 10lbs!

Turkey Tostadas:

Ingredients
1lb of lean ground turkey meat (or extra lean is always better, however it's pretty expensive)
1 can of fat free refried beans
1tbs of cayenne pepper (or deciding on how spicey you want it. I like spicey)
1tbs of chili powder - these aren't exact measurements. I never measure. it's more of a to taste type of thing.
1/2 tsp of cumin
1/4 tsp of salt

Toppings
chopped lettuce
guacamole
fat free sour cream
salsa
reduced fat cheese.

Directions:
Cook ground turkey over medium heat until cooked all the way through.
Mix cayenne pepper, chili powder, cumin and salt together to make your taco seasoning (way less sodium than the store bought and tastes just as good).
when the turkey is cooked, mix in some of the taco seasoning and a little water.
For the beans I usually add a little bit of skim milk to them to make them a little more creamy. The FF kind tend to be a little dry.
Then just pile your toppings on and there you go!
Enjoy!

Recipe: Pumpkin Muffins

I know it's not really pumpkin season, but I found this recipe on sparkrecipes.com, and had to try it out for breakfast.


Low-Fat Pumpkin Muffins:

Ingredients
1 box of spice cake mix
1 15 oz. can of pumpkin puree
1/3 Cup of water
1/3 cup of natural no sugar added applesauce

Directions
Blend ingredients together with a mixer. Using an ice cream scooper, scoop into your muffin tin. Bake at 375* for 20 mins (or until cooked throughly)


Before going in the oven...








They are so delicious and pretty low in fat. They would be so good with chopped walnuts!

Excuse Me, but I need to vent for a second.

Get this - Backstory:
Before we had DH's BFF come clean the pool, we were told it at least had to be full (because it was about 3/4 the way empty). So the listing agent had someone go out there to fill the pool. Well, they have this leveler that is connected to the hose and stops the hose from filling up the pool once it hits a certain point. Well, the hose is really still running and it's a crappy hose so from the pressure it was spraying the side of the house (the wall) where there's a hole from where the water faucet thingy comes out. And that water had been spraying the house (and inside the wall)for a week straight! DH and I wanted to get inside to see if there were any damages, so we called our realtor to let us in. Sure enough the wall was wet inside. DH barely hit it, and put a hole in the wall. It's not too bad. It's like 2X2 feet. We sat around for an 1 1/2hrs waiting for the listing agent to call back. They gave us the green light to go ahead and open up the wall to let it air out so it doesn't grow mold, so the hubs went ahead and cut out the drywall, and pulled out all the wet insulation. UGH.

So now we have a part of our wall cut out, that we'll have to drywall back in. It's not that big of a deal and won't cost us a lot of money, but it's just frustrating and annoying that we're the ones doing the work on this house that's not even really ours yet! THEY should fix it since THEY damaged it. I know this is a foreclosure and is sold "as is", but this isn't how it was when we signed the contract!I'm so irritated. The listing agents are the ones who did this, and they don't even give a crap. They suck so bad and aren't doing their jobs. Not at all. Our seller singed docs aren't even signed yet and we've been waitng for that for 3 weeks, so we can do inspections! That's because the retarded listing agent wasn't sending them our Earnest Money check, just the receipt. I'm so frustrated and stressed with them. I feel like us, our lender, and our realtor are doing all the work with no help with them, and we HAVE to close by the end of the month. And not only all that, but they won't even call us back. There is a main listing agent, a co-agent, and his assistant. Until Saturday my agent had never spoken with the main agent. She's been dealing with the co-agent and his assistant. Well BOTH the agents apparently went on vacation at the same time and didn't tell her! The guy she's been dealing with (co-agent) is on vacation until the 14th!!

I'm so frustrated and angry. I just spoke to my agent. She said that of course, no one went out to the property to check the wall this weekend. She finally got them to call her because she sent an emailing saying if she didn't hear from someone in an hour to get something done and some answers about the docs, she was going to call the asset manager's office. So now we find out that the asset mgr has had the docs for a week, but they haven't sent them back because they've been waiting for a 2nd opinion from the lender weather or not the pool needed to be blue. And the agent is sending his "associate" out to the house to look at the wall. Why not an inspector or professional, I don't know? UGGGGH!

We can back out, but really we can't because we need to be out of our rental by the end of July, and really don't have anywhere to go. And we really don't want to start the home buying process all over again. And rates are going up, we're already locked in. that was really long, but I had to get it out. I'm so fecking irritated and mad and frustrated!

Bottom line is, if it's not fixed by Friday my husband is going to end up fixing it after work. We need to get the appraiser back out there, and he cannot see that. It'll cause a lot of problems with our lender.

That was really really long, but I needed to vent.

June 5th

June 5th sucks. It's the "anniversary" (I hate calling it that, because anniversaries are supposed to be happy times) of Brian's best friend's death. I can't believe he's been gone for 3 years already. So this post is in honor of Kenny. We miss you.

This is Kenny and Kevin (who we also miss. He passed just over a year ago), on Halloween a fews years back.


Young Kenny and Brian snowboarding:

House Update

Good thing my husband is a carpenter. That means he has the hook-up in all the other trades. Stuff that he doesn't know how to do, like eletrical and pool stuff, for example. I swear. Brian could build me a house with his bare hands, but he can't work a remote or hook up the cable.

I got an email from my Loan Officer today. He said that the appraiser went out and said the pool is green. Duh. We knew that. That's what happens when a house is vacant for god knows how long, and there are no chemicals put into a pool and the pump isn't running.

My realtor had warned us that it may need to be cleaned, but for now we'd try to get away with it just being full (since it was almost empty before). When we went to the house last Saturday, the listing agent was filling up the pool. Not clean, but filling it up.

WELL, that apparently isn't good enough for our lender. They want it to be clean and in "working condition". Okay, I understand. Not surprised by this.

So anyway, the hub's best friend is a pool boy. Actually he owns his own pool cleaning business. He's going to hook us up. He's going over there tomorrow to see what he can do to make it look nice and purty. For free. We'll have to pay for chemicals if he needs anything extra, but all the labor is free. That saves us about a couple hundred dollars right there!


******UPDATE********
Pool is fixed! Thanks Ryan!!

Recipe: Low-Fat Crock Pot Chicken and Rice

I found this recipe on Sparkpeople.com. Here's their recipe:

Ingredients:
3 boneless/skinless chicken breast
2 Cups uncooked white rice
1 Can fat free cream of chicken soup
1 Can fat free cream of mushroom soup
1 Tbs of garlic

Directions:
In a slow cooker, cook your chicken breast and garlic on low, for 4-6 hours in 4.5 cups water. When chicken is done, shred and put back in cooker( do not drain water) . Add rice and let cook for 20-30 min or until rice is done. When rice is done, add soup and let cook for 15 more minutes. Makes 6 1-cup servings.

____________________________________________________________________

Here's what I did.

* Subsituted cooking the chicken in water for fat free organic chicken stock.
* Used Brown Rice instead of white
*Added about a 1/2 a packet of Onion Soup Mix for flavor
*Added vegis - I used yellow and red bell peppers

It was pretty good. I took a picture, but to be honest, it's not a very attractive looking dinner, but it still tastes yummy!

New Music

So this is my first music post. I love music. I love hearing new music, finding new bands I've never heard of, supporting local bands, etc. Unfortunately, I've been out of the "scene" for a while due to saving money. First for the wedding, now for the house. It's hard to get out to see shows when you can't really spend money on that type of thing. I mean a show plus drinks will cost you at least $50 these days.

Anyway, one of my favorite bands, Story of the Year, is coming out with a new album soon! Here's the first single from the new album, The Black Swan. I love it! Sounds a lot like the last album. And if you're looking for a great live show, I HIGHLY recommend seeing them. They have so much energy and are so totally awesome live. One of the best live bands I've seen. Usually at shows I'm rocking out, but everytime I see them I just stand there amazed by how much energy they have!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=TpsDsS3KFN8

Also another new band I like a lot is Ludo. I heard the song "Love MeDead" on the radio and turned the volume up. That hasn't happened in a while... I love the lead singer's voice. Sounds like a mix of Chester from Linkin Park and Gerard fro My Chemical Romance.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=SCU1JYmGxcA


One more. This one is just for fun. A local DJ made a "remake" of Flobot's "Handlebars", called "Scottsdale Bars". If you haven't heard the real version, check it out here:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=AuK2A1ZqoWs

And here is Craven Moorehead's "Scottsdale Bars". Too funny and so true!

http://theedge1039.com/blobots.php

I'm so Anxious!

To move into OUR house! 29 more days. I think I should start a ticker.

My loan guy (who is actually my BFF's husband. I got the hookups because I used to work in mortgage), told me that we should close escrow 6/30 rather than 7/1 to save us about $500 in interest. Good thinking!

We also met our realtor to look at the house again this weekend. This was the last house of a long day of house hunting, and we didn't remember certain things (for me I don't remember really looking at the master bedroom or the bathrooms. I kind of just poked my head in). Then we stopped at The Home Depot on the way home to browse. We looked at light fixtures, ceiling fans, appliances and paints. I think I took home every one of those paint swatch books. haha

I CAN'T WAIT!!! Eeeek!

That's all.