Too Late to Elope??

 Disclaimer: I'm in a bad mood and this post will reflect nothing but that, enjoy and you've been warned.

I'm so over this wedding planning crap. Is it too late to elope? I've only got 93ish days until my wedding...and for some reason all kinds of drama decided to come out NOW. 95% of the problem is I am a control freak and have a hard time letting go of things coupled with the fact that my family is CRAZY!

I've apparently "hurt my grandma's feelings" by deciding to print my invitations on my computer as opposed to having her hand write all 120 of the invitations. My alcoholic uncle and his crack whore girl friend are still in the "to be determined" pile. Do I invite them and risk having a huge blow out at my wedding? (My aunt, his ex-wife, will be there with her new husband...they mean 10x more to me then my uncle does, which is sad, but true). Trying to deal with people that think they are invited to the wedding but didn't make the cut because of budgeting reasons, without sounding like a bitch and hurting more feelings. I need a shower dress, ceremony and reception shoes, a bracelet, haven't tried on my dress since I picked it up in July (and it's sitting at my grandma's house who is aparently not happy with me...). My car is sitting at Bell Tire getting fixed for the second time in three months, Justin and I still have NO PLACE TO LIVE... we went to an apartment complex today to check it out and it just was not what we expected. I'm starting to get sick and my ankle is still bothering me.

I. AM. TIRED. (and sick of wedding planning)

Can you tell I'm PMSing? lol.

I promise tomorrow I will be in a better mood (god, I hope so) and will have a nice, upbeat post.

Good Night,
Happy Friday!

Chugging Right Along... I think.

So it's been a while.

It's been a hard couple of months for me, so I just didn't have the time or energy to update you all on my crazy life. Chances are that you're my friend on Facebook anyway and have heard my rants and raves on my daily status updates :)

My Mary Kay Grand Opening went well, I reached my goal, with a little stretching. I had four makeovers in total over 2 weeks, completing 17 new faces which gave a "Perfect Start"! Very exciting, but I'm not going to lie, very exhausting. After the first makeover I started to resent Mary Kay a little because I was realizing that the wedding was just around the corner and I was ditching my wedding stuff to work on my Mary Kay stuff, so it took a lot for me to get my crap together for the other 3 makeovers, but I did it and had a good time. I'm having a hard time seeing it in my future on a regular basis, but who knows, maybe after the wedding is over and life slows down a little bit, I'll be more ready to put sometime into it. We shall see...

So, the house hunt is officially over... and by that I mean, we gave up for the time being. We've put in 5 bids since November and only one was accepted and it ended up turning into a load of crap (you all know the story, I've explained it a couple times) and Justin and I were just tired of the stress and disappointment. We were also running out of time and I didn't want to buy a house just because the timing was right. If I'm going to spend thousands of dollars on a house, it's going to be worth it and I'm not sure we would have been 100% happy in anything that we saw while hunting. So for the next year or so we will be living in an apartment saving money are repairing some credit with the hopes that in a year we will be eligible for a little bit more money and will have more time and energy to devote to a house hunt. I do have to give my real estate agent real props! She fought for us and was amazing!! FYI: Her name is Wendy Harlow and works for Keller Williams in Plymouth, let me know if you want some more info, I would love to recommend her to anyone looking for a home.

We have an appointment with an apartment complex in Northville tomorrow night, so hopefully it will be a good place for a good price and we can move in sometime soon.

On the wedding front: I've gotten quite a bit done recently. The invitations are about 3/4 done, coasters are almost done and lots of little stuff have been checked off my list recently. I'm super excited to have all that stuff off my shoulders. This wedding is going to be AMAZING but I cannot wait for it to be over. Not in a bad way, I'm just ready to devote my brain to something else for a while, maybe... Grad School :)

Nice transition don't you think?

I am planning on going to Grad School in the fall, well, I would like to start Grad School in the fall. I'm not sure how I'm going to pay for it at this point, but it's definitely something I want to accomplish. Eastern has a Educational Psychology program that is fully online, which is AWESOME because then I can work full-time and take classes at the same time, no internship or classes required. Completely awesome! It's something I have a great interest in and would open quite a few doors, including teaching at a community college or working in a school. If anything it will give me something productive to concentrate on and make me feel like I have an escape hatch built into my professional life right now, which is much needed. I can't keep on the path I am on, it's not good for me.

That's what I've got for now. I had some political opinions and venting that I wanted to get out, but I think I'll save that for a different post... I don't want to overload you in one night ;)

Nighty Night!
Em.

Conflicted.

That's really the only word I can use to describe myself right now... oh, and overwhelmed, stressed and tired.

We've had condo drama lately and it's really wearing me out. The condo that we were buying appraised for less than what our offer was (as you might remember from my previous post) so it suddenly turned into a short sale situation because the seller owed more on the house then the appraisal price. Great, just what we were trying to avoid. So, they said it would be a quick 3 day process... that was over 3 weeks ago and we're still waiting. Well, just in case, Justin and I have been looking at other houses/condos while we're waiting to hear back from the seller's mortgage company. We found one we loved, we put in an offer (while we still have our offer in on Condo #1) and were told to bring our highest and best offer by this morning. Unfortunately, our highest and best is just $100 over the purchse price and I have NO idea how many offers came in between yesterday afternoon and this morning or if they were cash, over the purchase price, better credit, etc. Condo #2 was the first place I was actually excited about. It has no downfall, it has everything we want, and somethings that we never would of thought to want. So now we're waiting to hear on that one...

But wait, that's not all...

Last night Justin and I talked it out and we decided that we wanted to walk away from condo #1. It seems like, after seeing #2, that we were just settling. It didn't have some major things that we were looking for and has all this mortgage company drama coming along with it. It was really hard for me to walk away from Condo #1 because A) we lost $600 from the inspection and appraisal (our mortgage guy is going to try and get our appraisal money back, but no promises)... B) I had already completed 2 registries based on the colors in the kitchen/home. C)It came with all appliances which is hard to come by. But, in the end the "little" things that we didn't get made this a place that we were settling for. 1. No garage 2. No driveway 3. Only one parking space per condo 4. on the older end of the spectrum, so who knows what will need to be fixed in the near future and 5. the neighborhood wasn't where we wanted to be. I know some of you are probably saying "why in the hell did you put an offer in then?" and here's my answer:

At the time, it was the best condo we had found in our price range and because it was private owned, we could move in rather quickly. Until this "3 day" short sale crap started. Now we're 3 weeks into a short sale with no inkling of what is going to happen and we've found something else that has EVERYTHING we want and more. Even if we don't get Condo #2, it showed us that there ARE other places out there that fits what we need, in our price range. So, it's back to looking (unless we get Condo #2... cross your fingers) and if we dont' find something by March, we're going to start in an apartment and keep our search going until we find the perfect house not just "the best house we can find right now".

Potato Soup and The Office Marathon

Happy New Year bloggers :)

So I had planned to make a trip to the Outlet Mall in Howell this afternoon, but after a crappy nights sleep, an inch of snow on the ground and pure feeling crappiness I decided to stay home. I am getting some Mary Kay stuff done, watching season 4 of The Office and eating some of mom's famous "After Christmas Potato Soup". Sounds like a pretty decent afternoon if you ask me.

I've been sick for about a week or so, hasn't been terrible, just enough to be annoying and make me sleepy all the time. I have found that I tend to get upper respiratory problems when my allergies or a cold kick in this time of year. This is the worst it's been so I decided last night to pick up a fancy new humidifier for my night stand. I gotta say, it works pretty well. I only woke up once in the middle of the night fighting to breath instead of three, haha. So we're making progress.

We got some bad news on the condo yesterday. Well, good news and bad news actually.
Good News: The condo appraised for less than what our original price was, which means that the seller can either lower the price to the appraisal amount OR we have the option to put up the money or walk away.
Bad News: Our seller owes more on the condo then what the appraisal price is, so she couldn't put the condo at the lower price. Well, I am not about to pay $8,000 more then what a home is worth, just not going to happen.

We decided to walk away, then I got a call from our Real Estate agent (who is great btw, if you're looking for an agent let me know and I will give you her info) and she said the seller's current mortgage company will take 3 days to decide if they are willing to take the lower price or let us walk away. So we are in limbo until sometime next week. Talk about anxiety.

We've already formed our registries around this house, so we would have to redo everything which isn't a huge deal, just inconvenient. Oh well... we shall see.

I am now off to finish some Mary Kay stuff, got some paper work and calls to make. Then it's off to get ready for a lazy NYE with Justin. I will probably blog later (or tomorrow) about my "List for 2010" :)

Be Safe, Have Fun and Happy 2010!

Condo, Christmas, Craziness... Oh My!

So, I have about a half an hour left in my day, so I figured I would use it to update you fine people :)

On the housing front:

Our offer was accepted on the condo!! We are in the middle of getting our appraisal back and waiting for closing. We ended up offering $2000 less then the asking price, asking for the fridge (all other appliances were already included, we wanted the matching fridge, lol) and closing costs. They are going to do all 3, as well as fix some things we found during the inspection!! Once its ours, I will post some before and after pictures. I cannot wait to paint and make a home out of it!

Holidays:
Christmas was great, pretty low key, but great. We have 4 celebrations that we attend so it was jam packed with food, family and presents. Christmas Eve we always go to 10pm service, sit in the balcony to watch the signing of "Silent Night" by candle light. It's my favorite part of Christmas Eve :)

Christmas day is pretty crazy. This was my last year waking up at my parent's house for Christmas (more on how I feel about that later), usually my sister and I wake up first and then get the parents up, but... as we've aged it ended up being more about my parents waking up first and Laura and I following after. We have Christmas, just the 4 of us (or 7 of us, including the cats). Later Justin comes over for his little Christmas with us/breakfast. In the afternoon we go to my grandmas to have Christmas with her and my mom's brothers. It used to be a huge family affair, but after marriages/divorces it's become more about the five of us (my immediate family), my grandma and whatever uncle decides to show up. For the passed couple of years we have a second Christmas at my grandma's, the day after. This is my favorite one, it's "Aunt Judy" Christmas. My Aunt Judy, cousins, my family and grandma get together to have a smaller, more casual day. This year was pizza and cake, lol. Then Jusin and I jet off to have Christmas with his family. It's crazy, but I guess that's the nature of the beast.

New Years Eve is really not a big deal in my family, never has been. Usually Justin and I go out with his family/boating friends to a bar, but this year we are doing our own thing. We're stopping by Applebees for dinner to visit our friend, Brandon, then going back home to watch some movies. We usually end up wanting to leave the bar around 11:30 anyway, so this year we'll stay home, save money and celebrate just the two of us :)

I am more looking forward to the time off work then the actual holiday. I'm also going to hit up the Outlet Mall in Howell on NYE, so that is exciting. Hopefully it isn't crazy busy, because I'm not big on crowds... especially while shopping. NY Day, we will be finishing up our registry at JCPenny and meeting with Justin's grandparents for lunch.

That's really been the main focus for my life lately. I've got my Mary Kay grand opening coming up soon, and have to start getting my behind in gear! Next week is going to crazy. My birthday is next Thursday, then I have my Grand Opening that weekend, nothing like jamming it all in at once :)

I'll come back with some more details and be a little less vague tomorrow. I'm not being a very good blogger... I just come in to give a monthly update, which I'm sure is no fun for anyone!

Until tomorrow, be safe and stay warm!

Pink Cadillac

So a couple things have happened since my last update.
First, we put an offer on a condo, and then found out that the bank was already working with another offer (which we were told otherwise) so we promptly lost that one.
Tonight, we went out and looked at another condo and fell in love with it. It's perfect for us and is private owned, so no bank to deal with. It's got 4 bedrooms (His and Hers offices - YES!) and brand spanking new kitchen and all appliances are included. The neighborhood isn't 100% what we were looking for, but it will be ok for us for the next 5 - 6 years before we start thinking about having little kiddos.

In other news, I am working towards becoming a Mary Kay consultant. I had that party in November, and after taking some time to think about it, going to a MK training session to meet some of the ladies and get some great advise from my unit leader and coach, I have decided to take the plunge. I have always wanted to start my own business and this is the perfect way for me to do that! I get to structure everything myself and really have the opportunity to put in effort and actually get something out of it. I don't plan on making a career out of this, it would be great if it happened, but I won't hold my breath. I would be happy if I could just bring in some additional income so Justin and I can save up for a house. My absolute top goal that I see as being a possibility would be to have this supplement my income enough that I could get another part-time job and dedicate more time to MK. We shall see. So, if you need a MK consultant or want to do a FREE makeover let me know!! My grand opening will start January 9th, so I will good to go after that.

I guess that's all I have for now. I honestly could think of more to say, but I am extremely tired. This week has kicked my butt and I started a new early schedule on top of it. So, I'm off to bed and will update more after the weekend. I've got 2 makeovers I going to as well as some babysitting time, so it should be fun!

Happy weekend!

Pocketfolds, Ribbon, Monograms, OH MY!

So I have found the style that I want to with my invitation bellybands, but the construction process is going to be interesting. I bought a custom embosser with a monogram on it, and I LOVE IT. I just am having a hard time trying to figure out how to put together the bellyband and monogram so that it looks nice and not like an at-home craft project. This will be my mission this weekend! I wonder if mailing labels will work, over card stock? hm.... I will have to try that.

These are the two pictures I have of the front of the invitations so far. The top of the monogram says "Justin & Emily" the bottom says "May 8, 2010" and there is a "P" in the middle.

Right now it is being held together with some scotch tape and the bellyband is a little too loose. I am in desperate need of some masking tape and some better paper to make the monogram look more finished.

That's all I have for tonight. I plan on working the kinks out this weekend so when my sister (MOH) comes home for Christmas she can help me put them together. :: insert evil laugh here ::