Home for Sale

As most of you know, I am finishing up my residency this year (done at the end of June) and will be moving back up to the Twin Cities in July. So...we are putting our house on the market February 1st. Match day (when the new incoming residents find out they are coming to Mayo) is in March and so we're shooting for getting the house on the market and seeing how much activity there is in the next month before Match Day arrives. In a tough real estate market, we are soooo lucky to have a great realtor helping us. She hires a stager to help her clients get their homes ready to show well. Last Monday, the stager came and gave us some suggestions, one of which was to install a tile backsplash in the kitchen. Given my busy work schedule, the proximity to baby's due date (and the associated pain with walking and moving I've been having), and the short time frame before having to get this all done...well, I was quite overwhelmed at first. But we have taken it one step at a time and have accomplished everything that was recommended to get the house ready. My mom and dad gave up their weekend to help us with installing the backsplash and shopping for home decor, new towels, plants, etc. to spruce up the house a bit. They were a tremendous help and the results are impressive (at least I think so). Hopefully potential buyers will agree!

Here's a peek at the process...and then what our house looks like today.

Dad putting up the sticky backing to stick the tile to.

Mom and Steve working on putting in the edges with the half pieces of tile cut expertly by Steve with special glass tile cutters.Dad putting up some sheets of tile. You can tell he's having a great time!
Ta Da! The finished kitchen...

Kitchen with dining area.Close up of the tile backsplash

I think it really makes the kitchen look great! It was more work than we thought it would be, but still worth doing on our own, since it would have been about $500 and 2 weeks time to have the guys from Home Depot do it.

On to the rest of the house...

Family room

Austin's bathroom...now converted to a "grown-up" bathroom (aka new towels, rugs, shower curtain, art on the wall, etc. and bath toys stowed away).
Baby's room...luckily the stager told us we didn't need to change anything in the kids' rooms. Baby's room is back to looking like it did when Austin was born (except now we have a pink changing table cover). The fabric on our glider chair is coming apart, so we do have new glider cushions ordered and on the way.

Master bedroom.

Master bathroom.
For this, we just got new towels and rugs and put up some cute little shelves above the toilet.

Basement
We flipped the furniture around so that the first thing you see isn't Austin's toy shelf. Now as you come down the stairs, you see the piano, fireplace, and a reading chair.

Office
So that's what our house is looking like these days. I didn't take a picture of Austin's room today after the photographer came through because Austin was already busy reading stories with daddy before nap time.

Other fun photos recently...

I have envied some of the portraits that Rachel takes of Kaia and asked her how she got such great photos since she has pretty much the same camera we are using. She said she uses a portrait lens and I remembered that we have a portrait lens for this camera that has been sitting in the camera bag. So...I put it on the camera and tried to take some pictures of Austin. Now, bear in mind that Austin is a wiggly 3 year old and doesn't stay in one place like the baby will. I think I got some decent photos, and I'll keep messing with the settings in preparation for taking some portraits of our new arrival soon!

In amongst all the house stuff, work stuff, and baby stuff, we also made a quick 1 day trip up to the Twin Cities last Friday (after my 6pm-3am Thursday night shift) to check out a preschool for Austin next year. We visited Shakopee Area Catholic School (SACS) and the director we met with happened to be an old friend of my mom's! It was a very nice school and is right down the road from St. Francis Hospital, where my new job at Metropolitan Pediatrics is located. We're excited to get him signed up when the registration date comes around. We also have him signed up at St. Hubert's in Chanhassen, which will be a great option if we end up living a little further north in Eden Prairie or Chanhassen. We got to stay for dinner with Michelle and Brian on Friday night, then headed back down to Rochester for the house project extravaganza over the weekend.

I cannot say enough THANK YOU's to my mom and dad for helping over the weekend and for Michelle and Brian being so sweet to come over and cook us dinner Friday night when we were so exhausted and stressed. We love you all so much and are so lucky to have such wonderful family!

Next up....baby time! We can't wait. Stay tuned for a birth announcement when Baby Girl arrives!