Settling in... And that time I found a bunch of money all over my house

It's been a little over a week since we moved into our new house and I am in love! I can't believe how much God has blessed us with this perfect, beautiful house. And with how amazingly the move went on Saturday.

I was honestly blown away by how smooth our moving day was. I will admit I was preparing for the worst - including a long, frustrating day, a broken piece of furniture or two, and lots of pressure to make sure everyone had enough to do so they wouldn't feel like we were wasting their time.

I couldn't have been more wrong and I couldn't be more pleased about it.

View from my kitchen window.  Gorgeous!

Blessing #1: Doad was second in line at the Uhaul pickup. No long wait or trouble of any kind. Guess who started their moving day on schedule? We did!

Blessing #2: So many people came to help us! We let our family and some close friends know about the move but I wasn't really sure how many people would be able to make it. It seemed like they just kept coming and coming! And with awesome timing too - a new "shift" came just in time to help unpack.

Blessing #3: We packed so much quicker than I thought we would. I was expecting the load up to take all morning. I don't remember exactly when we finished but we packed and caravanned about 9 cars to the new house (about a 40 minute drive) and got there before noon!

First fire in our wood stove! :)

Blessing #4: Everyone was the perfect amount of helpful. They knew when to ask for something to do and when to just grab things and take it to the truck. I never felt overwhelmed at all! They even helped me pack up my fridge and didn't judge me when we found moldy pasta hiding in the back :/ As soon as we got to the new house (and had a quick tour), my mom set straight to wiping down the fridge, restocking it, and setting up the pantry. Some of them even stayed til dinner helping to stock cupboards, set up and make the bed, and set up the entertainment center. A superstar moving crew to be sure!

Blessing #5: Nothing broke!

What? Does this happen in real life? I thought all moves were accompanied with at least one piece of broken furniture guaranteed. Amazingly, this was not the case for us. Happy HAPPY wife right here!

*We did purposely saw a beam off of our bookcase headboard for our bed in order to fit it upstairs, but it was easily reattached and you can't even see the "damage"! :)

Blessing #6: The weather was perfect! Ok, so it started out a tad on the chilly side, but the day actually warmed up nicely. No coats needed by the time afternoon came around. If you follow me on Instagram (@JessicaDanae7) you know that was not the case this past weekend - so glad we moved the week before all this snow!

Blessing #7: Hide and Seek with money. Someone found a forgotten dollar in our new shed and brought it in the house. They stuck it on the wall just for fun and somewhere along the way it started multiplying! Before we knew it several dollars and some tea packets were taped up next to the first dollar. We have since found dollars in our closets, in drawers, taped under stairwells... Everywhere! Our count is currently up to $13 and from what I hear, there are several more to discover.

To all of our friends and family who helped us move and who prayed for us that day - thank you from the bottom of my heart. These blessings are just a few of the wonderful things God did for us that day.  I was truly blessed and blown away by all the support and help and love shown to us last week.  And thank you for every dollar you've hidden.  As sappy as this sounds, every time I find a dollar it reminds me of God's love and how much he blessed us with an amazing group of loved ones to do life with. Can't wait to host some parties for all of you! :)



PS.  I posted pics of all the dollars and their hiding places below.  Sorry for the pic overload, but I wanted  a place where I could keep track of them and update when I find new ones. :)

Where it all started :)

*Found between 1/20/13 and 1/29/13.

* Found on 2/9/2013

*Found on 2/27/2013

We're moving!!!!

After several days of waiting (soooo not easy for me) we have finally heard good news! Praise the Lord!  

To recap what's been happening with our moving adventure: Our appraiser refused to make some minor changes on our appraisal and demanded that we get an entirely new appraisal done.  We found this out only a couple days before we were supposed to close and had to reschedule our settlement date as well as our moving date.

I'm still a little frustrated about that, but mainly just happy that it's over and we can move on.  The appraiser finished Monday evening and the underwriter approved the loan last night.  HUGE sigh of relief! 

Our new plan is to close tomorrow (Eeeep!) and move this weekend.  I am dying with excitement and so so ready to be done living out of boxes.  Our house looks like a maze of cardboard right now.  

I am also way stoked to have a whole house to decorate!  I have been slacking on my "Pinterest-ing" until things were more finalized, but I have a feeling that will be taking up all of my free time soon. ;)  My first project is gonna be the craft room/office, I think.  I am on the hunt for an old armoire that can be repurposed into this beauty:

Cottage Hill

Is this not the awesomest thing you've ever seen?  And hubby has a huge, new garage for projects just like this, how perfect! ;)  I shall be posting soon with some more of my favorite ideas so far.  

Mani Monday: Zoya Sabrina

I got new nail polish in the mail! Yayyyyy! :)

You might say I'm a nail polish addict.

I do.  *hehe*

I can hardly resist it when I see awesome nail polish sales online.  Last week, I just couldn't resist the temptation when Zoya offered a "3 for the price of shipping" deal.  Yowza that's a deal!

So of course, I had to do a new mani when they came in the mail this weekend.

Unfortunately, I didn't have the best of luck with my first polish.  I picked Sabrina, a soft, barely pink color.  I didn't realize how sheer the formula was going to be.  (I think I got too excited about the sale and forgot to read the fine print.)  Womp womp.

That's three coats of Sabrina up there.... and you can still see my natural nail through it.  :/  I think I'll still use this polish as a base coat for a natural looking french tip, but it was not quite what I was expecting.  :(

I was, however, VERY proud of how my "I <3 U" stamp came out.  Cute, right? :)  I used a bundle monster stamping plate and Smokey Brown nail polish by E.L.F. Cosmetics.

So to recap:

What I used:
- Base color: Sabrina by Zoya
- Stamp: BM02 from Bundle Monster 2010 Stamping Plate Collection
- Stamp color: Smokey Brown by E.L.F. Cosmetics
- Top coat: Hardwear P.D. Quick Top Coat by Butter London

I know I'm jumping the gun a little on the Valentine's Mani, but I thought this color seemed to fit the theme and I wanted to get practicing on my stamping so that they're Perfect with a capital "P" for the real deal.

I hope you all had a lovely Monday!

Linkin' up...

Worry vs. Trusting

This week has been quite a bummer for Doad and I.  Unless the Lord provides a miraculous softening of hearts, it looks like we won't be moving this weekend after all.

It's a long story and I don't know all the details, but basically in order for our loan to be fully approved, the underwriter requested a revised appraisal.  (Long story short: it needed to be updated to have our names on it instead of a previous buyer that fell through.)  This should be simple and easy, but the appraiser is refusing to do this on the basis that "we are not his clients".

According to our loan officer, this is not true.  This is the part where I don't know all the details, but according to the way our loan and contract are set up we ARE legally his client and he is required to make the changes.  He is saying otherwise, but has also said that for a hefty chunk of change he MIGHT be able to do something about it.  Essentially blackmail...  grrrrr!

Our loan officer made her final case yesterday.  We are waiting to hear back about how it went.  Please pray for us that the Lord would soften this man's heart and that our loan officer was able to present her case in a gracious, organized and irrefutable manner.

If this does not work, it means that we will need to get an entirely new appraisal and start a lot of this process over again.  While this isn't the end of the world, it does mean a delay in closing and moving - which also means scrambling and rescheduling as all of our plans were to move into the house this Saturday.

I've been clinging to this verse from Sunday's devotional on SheReadsTruth:

I love it when your devotions just seem to hit you where it matters.  I don't always feel like I can hear the Lord speaking clearly to me, but it sure has been clear this week.  Check out these words from Monday's devotion:

Even though I'm frustrated and don't understand why this glitch with moving has come up, I am still trusting and resting in the promise that God is fighting for us.  He is writing our story.  I will remain calm and keep praying for a miracle. :)

Friends, will you pray with me?

Please and thank you :)

Exciting News For Doad and Jess!!

Happy New Year. Wow! So much has happened since I last posted. Our biggest news is this:

We bought a house!!!

Isn't is darling?  I'm so SO excited and so amazed and blessed by the way the Lord led us to this house.  It reminded me a lot of this post (minus the con artists).  God has been so faithful to us throughout the searching and I just feel so reassured about this move because I can see His hand in our story.  

I have to admit that I was starting to get a little discouraged.  I was feeling like we'd seen almost every house in MD for sale in our price range and none of them seemed to be a good fit for both me and Doad.  He would love one house and I would hate it and vice versa.  Or we would just both not like it.  

A couple Saturdays ago we had yet another unsuccessful day of house-hunting with our agent.  I just began praying to the Lord on our way home and asking him what we should do next.  I remembered how he came through for us with a car and wanted to trust him the same way for our house.  I felt this strong urge to get back online and look at the listings again.  When we got home I pulled up the website again and started looking at the houses thinking maybe we missed one.  Well we did... sort of.  There was a new one from the day before that we hadn't seen yet.  A really nice one.  

We emailed our agent and asked about it.  She told us she could take us to see it on Monday at 2PM.  That worked perfectly for us because Doad and I both had that week off (love God's timing).  When Monday came we found out that there were already 2 offers on this house and if we wanted it we'd have to make an offer that day.  Well, we loved it, made an offer, signed a million papers, and got an email back about 4 hours later with the signed contract attached.  They accepted our offer!

It took months to get to this point, but once we found the house it all happened so quickly!  We are beyond happy and cannot wait to move in.  Just 10 more days to go!  God is GOOD!

:)