Deb is No Longer in NY

You can see my new DebinUT blog here.

Leaving Soon

We've decided we'll all leave (except for maybe Sarah) before our house sells to avoid a separation.  I will probably create a DebinUT site if you want to continue following my insanity.  I'll probably post a link on this site.  If not, farewell until we meet again. 

Photo credit:  My daughter Hannah.  I like how the sign was blowing in the wind.

First Showing

We listed our house today and we've already shown it.  On Monday, we'll show it again.  Our poor kids were home alone when the call came in that we were having a showing.  We were out on a date.  I made the mistake of leaving the cell phone in the car.  Never again.  The kids called six times and then made the decision to okay the showing even though they couldn't reach us.  They scrambled to get the house show-ready-- depersonalized, decluttered, and desilenced with nonstop elevator music.  They are impressive.  Fortunately, we got home on time so we could wisk them away to the park and they didn't have to hang out in the basement.  I think our house is cleaner than it's ever been.  But we still have a lot of work to do.

Preparing to Sell

Our house is going on the market today.  I thought I'd have a couple of weeks.  Nope.  We've priced it very low so it will sell fast.    I'm so glad I did all the little house-preparing projects I've done throughout the year even though we weren't sure it was going to happen.  They call that "opportunity management."  Now that the possiblities are becoming realities, I'm not sure how I feel about this.  We really like our home.  Too bad we can't take it with us.  The fact that we'll be lucky to break even is very sad.

I painted this hallway yellow yesterday.  You can see the sunlight shining in where the big black chalkboard used to be.  Vigorous sanding, three coats of primer, and a coat of paint later, and it's ready for strangers.

Now to get the rest of the house stranger ready.

Deb in UT

There's no turning back.  We're moving.

Adults Walk, Children Scoot

Everybody's happy.

Babies!

The zucchini plants are finally having babies.  Problem solved.

Marshmallow Fun

I made this tonight.

He made this.

She made these:

We made these:

I got the idea from this site.  Here's one of her pictures.

I've been reading Katie's blog for about a year.  She also made frosting hair for some of her marshmallows. We didn't use a thin paintbrush like she used for the food coloring.   If we'd had toothpicks that might have worked. Instead, we used the tips of forks.  I'm not sure how she keeps the food coloring from bleeding.  Maybe gel food coloring would work better than liquid.