House Buying....Oh Joy!!

So as you may know we have recently sold our house and are in the process of purchasing our next home.
It is an emotional time, which is something i wasn't altogether prepared for, i feel sad to be leaving the house we have been in for over 8 years, this was our first home as a couple, the first house either of us owned, it was where we developed our (not particularly strong) DIY skills, it was where we got engaged and where we lived when we got married and most importantly it was the home we lived in when two became three and our daughter was born. So to leave all of those memories behind will be a big wrench for me.
As well as the fact I am comfortable here, i know this house inside out, every creak is familiar (and annoying!) so to be living somewhere new will be strange for a while.
But i am also unbelievably excited about the move! The house we have purchased is beautiful and it will be lovely to put our own stamp on it over the coming years and to fill it with our family life so we can in grain new memories there.

One thing i did prepare myself for was that the whole process would be stressful. I am a sensible, logical person and despite that i still wasn't prepared for the reality. What a nightmare the house buying process is in England!! It just drags on and on and you have the constant fear that someone in the never-ending chain will pull out and it will all fall apart. I feel that since we made the offer and it was accepted we have been holding our breath! Holding our breath whilst the next people in the chain found somewhere and the next people etc etc.
Then holding our breath whilst that was finalised. Then waiting for all the documentation to be collated and agreed. Holding our breath for all the surveys to be done and for all the contents lists to be completed. Don't get me started on people being petty about curtain rails!!
To be fair i think we have been lucky (touch-wood) as i think the whole process could have been a lot worse, but it has still been a constant worry nevermind terribly expensive!!
One issue we did have was that when we received the land registry documentation the boundary line on our new house didn't match up with the property we had been shown, the documentation showed the garden as half the size it actually was!! Yikes! So that all went back to our solicitors to resolve as without the whole garden the house would not be suitable for us........cue a loooong period of us holding our breath and keeping our fingers crossed. After weeks and weeks the land registry finally sorted it all out and that was all fine.....phew!
So last Friday we went to our solicitors and signed the paperwork.......Whoop whoop!!
Now we just wait for everyone else to sign and agree on a date, provisionally the 12th November. So less than 2 weeks away!
Here is our timeline if anyone is interested:
accepted an offer on our house - mid July
made an offer on new house - end of July
signed contacts - 26th October
potentially move into new house - 12th November
So its been 4 months from start to finish which is longer than we hoped for but not as bad as it could have been.
So our new house........here it is.......
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What do you think? I love it and have done from the moment i saw it! We looked at 16.....yes 16 houses in total and this was the only one that i had a real reaction to. Our new family home.
What is the house buying process like in other places i wonder? Is England better or worse in comparison?

House Selling - The Edge of Sanity

My husband and i purchased our current house back in 2004, when i was just 21. At the time we didn’t know how fotunate we were to be able to get enough money from the bank to make a purchase or how timely our purchase was.
My husband (boyfriend at the time) decided he was fed up of renting and wanted to buy somewhere, we hadn’t been together long, just a few months, but i decided to buy with him. So of to the bank we went, no problems there, then off to the estate agents, again no problems. Two house viewings later we found the one we wanted and made an offer. In under 3 months we were in the house. Very straight-forward.
That was 8 years ago and we are still in the same house. Whilst we both love this house, and everything it represents, we have outgrown it and have been trying to move for sometime now.

We initially put the house on the market at the end of 2010 with estate agent number 1, we priced the house at a lower value than they suggested as their valulation was so far above the others in our area. We were on with them for 12 weeks and didn’t have 1 viewing.
After 12 weeks we changed to Estate Agent number 2, they did get us the odd viewing but not much and when we asked for feedback from the viewings they were very generalised, which was no help at all. We stayed with them for 5 months before taking the house off the market as i was then pregnant. So we decided to wait until after the baby was born.
Fast forward 8 months, our daughter was born and was then 4 months old, so we took the plunge and went back on the market. We felt positive as in this time we had a lot of work done to our house including a new kitchen and various pieces of decoration and updating. We went with Estate Agent number 3 this time. We had a number of viewings with them but didn’t get any offers. We even had a few second viewings, but more annoyingly with these the viewers didn’t even provide any feedback!!
So after 12 weeks we added Estate Agent number 4 to the mix……..the more the merrier right? And we figured it would provide a little healthy competition. Really we were just desperate to sell!!
Our desire to move had only increased since our daughter was born, as my husband works an hour away and being at home for 12 hours a day just me and baby is draining without any help. And my husband really wants to see our daughter more during the week as he loves spending time with her. So the pressure was on for us and every day that ticked by without a sale was excrutiating!!
At this point Estate Agent number 2 contacted us and asked if we wanted them to also market our property, so in our hazy, desperate state we agreed and so we were on the market with 3 estate agents! crikey!!!
The viewings flooded in and each one meant i had to tidy the house and then me and our baby girl had to make ourselves scarce for the agent and viewers to wander through our home. Exhausting!
But ultimately worth it. After just a few weeks Estate Agent 2 got us an offer for just under the asking price which we eagerly accepted. Yes i know…..we didn’t even haggle!! Normally i would, but it was a fair offer and there was no way on earth we would risk losing the buyers!!!

So all’s well that ends well.
We were on the market for 5 months and had countless viewings. Frustrating. But house selling always is i hear. But what was more frustrating was the incompetence of the agents! Each one was just as bad as the other. Turning up late for viewings so that the viewers were just stood around waiting, not knowing the details of the house despite having a set of particulars, not following up with us about anything! I can’t count the number of times i heard a viewer ask if there was parking and the agent say “i’m really not sure” when we had told them over and over there was a garage and a parking space! I thought Estate Agents were sales people, but not once did i hear them try to sell the house, just guide viewers from room to room with a cursory “this is the bathroom” i’m so glad we are paying them all that money to state the obvious!!

I cannot wait for this house sale to complete so i can get my sanity back again!!
The purchase of our new house is a whole other story…………….

Homemade Nursery Decorations

When i got married to my husband Simon in 2010 i made a lot of the wedding decorations myself. I'd never done anything like that before and i discovered it was sooo much fun and really rewarding to see how things came together.
After the wedding i didn't really have any need to make anything, so i put my glue gun to one side and got on with life.

Then when we found out we were expecting a little girl i just knew there would be something i could make for her nursery that would sate my need for something crafty.

I had planned on making the decorations long before the baby was due, but as things worked out we didn't finish painting her nursery until about 3 weeks before she arrived and so i spent my last few weeks of pregnancy sat on our living room floor surrounded in tissue paper and ribbon. It was hard work doing arts and crafts with an enormous belly. But, for me, it was totally worth it.

This was a garland i made to hang on the wall above her cot and also to hang from some shelves in the room.

And then these were the tissue paper pommanders i made to hang from the ceiling in the corner of her room. She has loved them since she was very young. She used to lay on her changing table and stare at them and now she is bigger if you hold her she knocks them so they swing around.

 Its lovely for me to know that something i made with my own hands provides her with some sense of enjoyment.