Pauline, lol Yeah, I know, boo hoo. We actually got a really great deal on the house because we bought one that someone else put a deposit on, picked upgrades then changed their mind. Permits were already pulled. There is no way we could even afford this house had we not bought like that. When we came into the picture the house was going for almost $450k. We then said, ok, we don't need the granite in the kitchen, or the fireplace in the family room, nor the $3K faucets in the master plus other misc things, then we made them an offer almost $100k less. It ended up being less then what the base house costs, we still have tile / granite in the master as well as a beautiful fireplace between the bedroom & sitting area. While we did good, there are a lot of builders hurting, they are lowering prices but not our builder. My guess is that after the house went up, someone else came in looking to buy it which is why they wouldn't help us with the very 1st offer we had on our house. We asked for $7,500, they said no. I've been watching the market here and know there are a few houses that they haven't been able to sell, 2 in particular that are the same model as ours but on crummy lots have had multiple price drops. There are a few other houses sitting that are estates. We got through Tuesday with a lot of luck. The mover had to bring a 2nd truck which they had around the corner or something. We were nervous it wouldn't fit and it didn't. We ended up loading the plants in a 26 foot U haul - even stacking the plants there wasn't enough room so when we got to the perennials I just threw plants one on top of the other and figured they would grow back. We left hubby's desk because it would snap in half had they moved it and my daughters bed was broken (hubby) so we'll have to go shopping. Once I get my money from my dad's estate I will take her for a new bedroom set. Our buyer walked through the house not knowing if we'd be out by closing. Hubby ended up leaving with my car, then came back for me. My agent called, I told him that I was going to vac the house but the power was shut off. The movers finished up just before he was ready for me. I had enough time to go through the house, close windows & change my clothes. Hubby called he was really upset. Turns out the buyer thought we'd leave the electric hooked up for them. How silly. Their agent is the wifes grand father, he knows better, for them not to call all of the utilities was something he should have told them to do. The things that came up in the inspection ended up working out after all. We have a crawl space, at one time the owner before my hubby dug it out and put in a service pit. It's 7ft tall by 20 ft wide, about 30 or 40 ft long and holds the water heater, furnace & softener. The old owner put up concrete blocks to hold the dirt in, but when he put them in it wasn't level. You can clearly see that it isn't a load bearing wall and there were no cracks in it to suggest it's moved. Their inspector actually wrote it was amateurishly put up, but it ended up being our problem. The title company had already put the agreed on terms in the closing sheet, so they were forced to accept a $300 deposit my hubby gave to the contractor we picked. The rest of the total repairs was credited to them so if they decide to use someone else, they are $300 short. This was a huge stresser. They ended up calling the contractor Thursday and decided they didn't like him for some reason or another and wanted to change what was agreed on. By the time we got the phone call it was after 6pm on Friday, the start of a national holiday. I don't know how either of us held it together all weekend, we were so stressed. We fully expected not to close Tuesday due to it. The funny thing is I don't remember them ever going down to look at the service pit the 2 times they were there, even when their inspector was there. When they came for the walk through Tuesday, you'd think he would climb down the ladder to look for himself, nope. We also offered for them to come and look at it weeks ago, they never took us up on the offer. We got screwed with our cabinets and ended up with almost 1/2 of what it was worth. In hind sight, we should have had our attorney deal with it months ago to have them take them out. Yesterday I couldn't even put the kitchen together, I put a few things away but decided I'd open boxes in case we needed something & would deal with it today. Once the movers left yesterday, my daughter & I set up all the bedrooms, including computers & TV's. Comcast had come early in the morning, before the computers were unloaded so we couldn't check to see if all of the rooms had internet & we didn't. Hubby and my son worked on unloading the plants (about 500 pots) then made the hour drive to return the truck. By the end of the night I set mine up (which is supposed to run the wired rooms) but the net in the bedrooms wasn't working so we have to get the people that wired the house out today. My son was upset, he couldn't play his Xbox so I told him to bring his stuff to the computer room & hook up there since it's the only room that has internet. Once he did that he was happy. It's going to be another long day. I should have started already but sitting down feels too good. lol You would think that the house would be pretty clean but it's not. The kitchen cabinets are pretty gross, there is dust all over them. Hopefully by tomorrow most things will be put away that we use daily so that I can start looking in the rest of the boxes for stuff I'll need. I still haven't found my business card holder or tools. While we tried to keep everything organized, when the movers came to unload yesterday boxes went in the wrong rooms so we have to deal with that. The top floor is done, I have piles of boxes that need to go to the main floor or basement, I don't doubt stuff in the main section needs to go up. It will be 10 years before we do this again. I don't know how people do this every few years. Moving is the pits. I can't wait to get outside and deal with the gardens. A lot of the roses started blooming because the inside of the truck was hot.

Buy a garland or bush of faux fall leaves, peel them off the plastic veining. Use a gold paint pen or fine point gold marker to write your parents' first names and wedding date on them, and scatter those around the gold pumpkins. Buy inexpensive plain glass votive holders, wrap with a strip of vellum cut to fit around the votive holder (overlap and close with double-faced tape) put a gold votive inside and write their names and wedding date on the vellum, then use the same pen to run a narrow band of gold on the top and bottom of each piece of vellum. Glue a silk leaf (veining removed) to the bottom with Aleene's Tacky glue or hot glue, and scatter a few of those on the tables for candlelight. You might check first to see if those are allowed - some banquet venues are funky about how candles can be used. Congrats to your parents on a wonderful milestone! Hope the party is terrific, and that you can relax and enjoy it, too!

Ha ha! When I first saw the post-it note idea it didn't seem especially helpful. Then it came time to empty my kitchen, a daunting and discombobulating process. After checking and rechecking the same cupboard for about the tenth time, I remembered the post-it notes, which suddenly sounded genius! Thank you all for your words of encouragement! I'll post updates.

Breezy - well, we're picking what we can, we've still got a lot of details to work out - our GC is also the cabinet maker...so, we know that we want cherry, Shaker style, dark stain, but the actual stain for the cabinetry is dependent upon the color that we do on our red oak hardwood when it's refinished and we are holding on our hardwood guy to get us colors until we know our start date with the GC. So, while waiting for all this, I went to HD and picked up some of their floor sample swatches and we came up with a color that we want to emulate for our floor and have been using it as our "close-enough" color. We're working out our pulls - I know that we want pulls and not knobs, and I know that we want a transitional/contemporary look to those, so I don't have an exact pull, but we're close. Paint, not under control AT ALL right now. And I'm amazingly relaxed about not knowing that. haha I don't expect to have that decided until the cabinets, granite, and lighting are in place. We're going neutral and lighter. Quite possibly a blue undertone, but not necessarily actually blue. Color in a room changes so much when you have everything in place and our room is changing significantly from what it is currently because we're tearing out a wall and removing a window - light is going to play quite differently once all that happens. So, I have a pile of swatches that I've put next to our bits & pieces of stuff and eliminated a lot and we have a few that we'll wind up getting samples of when it comes time to paint. We've got our faucet, we've got our GD, but I have to purchase the air switch. I need to work out details on plugmold - don't know if I should spring for the angled plugmold from Task or just go with the HD stuff. And, oddly enough, even though I'm a photographer, kitchen lighting is just baffling me. I guess it's that I'm used to seeing light and modifying light - I guess it's really the electrical aspect of it that's confusing to me. marti8a - thanks for the vote of confidence. We're happy about having so many of these decisions made...but now I just want to know when we can get started! Ginny - Thank you! I haven't forgotten about you, I promise. I owe you an email. I've been doing a ton of looking and deciding about stuff. It can be seriously all-consuming - if only I didn't have work work to do also this would be so much easier! Sometimes I wish that I were one of those people who just said, "KD, please create a new kitchen for me." BTW, I'm so glad that you're hanging out here even though your kitchen is done. :)