From the back yard, with a nice view of the deck:
Another shot of the back of the house, with the pond. Our property line goes back a bit farther than I am standing:
Side view of the house, with some of our side yard:
These pictures were taken on February 13th – so the snow is pretty much gone now. Waiting to see what pops up this spring …
On December 23rd, we got a pretty good Christmas gift: we get to move into the house in Ramsey! I have a lot more pictures of our new house online here. We’re pretty excited… the dogs are going to love their new back yard.
Closing the last week in January! We can’t wait.
I could take a picture, but it’s dark outside an I’m too lazy. And too tired.
Of all weekends for a blizzard to hit western Minnesota, it had to be the weekend we were moving. My brother drove up here yesterday in a 24′ U-haul Truck, and the original plan was that he would spend the night, so we could take our time loading up the truck. But we kept an eye on the weather… and some how we (well, mostly my brother and Chris) filled the U-haul in 4 hours, and sent him on his way!
Chris left an hour later with the dogs and a cats… and left behind a pretty big moving mess, and waaayyy more stuff than I could possibly fit in my truck.
If they hadn’t left last night, they would have been stuck here until Monday. The blizzard was rolling in right as Chris left, and it hasn’t let up at all. I shoveled a good 8″ deep path from the house to the garage, and spent the entire day cleaning and packing, unpacking, repacking my truck. Now I’m all alone in an empty house. I really hope that the storm lets up tonight because I need to be out of here by 10 tomorrow morning!
I ended up backing out of the consignment opportunity I posted about earlier. Why? Because my house sold the day after I posted about it, and I had more important things to do – like find a new place to live.
But after requests for a product line, I ended up making a whole bunch of shampoo, conditioner, and lotion. The shampoo still hasn’t settled and needs to be topped off – I just filled it 30 minutes ago. So the picture’s not the best.
This is something like 80 oz. each of different “flavors” of shampoo, conditioner, and lotion. I’m not really looking forward to labeling it all.
Regarding the house – we are 99% certain that we will be living on Okapi Street in Ramsey! … By February. Unfortunately there are some hang-ups with the sellers moving into THEIR new house (it’s a huge game of dominoes), so while we have all signed the purchase agreement, they have until January 31st to give us the house.
Yes, that sucks. But it’s worth waiting for – and there is always a chance that they will be out sooner. The big problem is where to place the cats for a month. We’re hoping that Chris’s mom’s house works out – but she has two cats already. (Honestly, we don’t know ANYBODY without cats. How weird is that?).
Oh yeah. Nigel has a fatty tumor under the muscle on his left side that keeps getting bigger. He has surgery on December 16th. :(
Click on the picture!
It’s about time I posted an update.
Pictured above is the house that I offered a huge chunk of change for yesterday. I don’t know what the owners think of my offer yet, but they have already purchased a new house so they are itching to move out.
Jumping ahead of the gun? Oh yeah. That’s right. I sold my house! Well, not QUITE sold yet – the pending sign isn’t officially up. But the inspection was last night, it went well, and things are moving along nicely so we close on December 15th.
Back to the house above:
It’s in Ramsey. It’s also the only house I’ve looked at that doesn’t need thousands of dollars of work up front. Just over an acre, with a marshy pond in the back.
I realize this probably means mosquitos. Aside from that, the worst thing we could find wrong with the house was that one of the bathroom sinks was dripping just a bit – the plumbing needs to be tightened up. It also has a circuit breaker that was put in by a company who went out of business after being sued for causing fires – we’re asking for that to be replaced before purchasing.
And, it has an AMAZING deck and patio. Absolutely beautiful inside and out. The down side is that it’s a bit farther out than we were hoping – but for the price, it’s really hard to pass up something like this.
I may be jumping the gun a bit by posting – I don’t know for sure yet if this is where we will end up living. But it’s pretty exciting!
Above: One of my “Holiday” soaps – Candy Cane. The bottom red layer set up too quickly, so it isn’t as straight as I’d like it to be – but mostly I’m happy with the turnout. I used up the rest of all of the minty Essential Oils I had on hand.
Tonight I poured a Chocolate soap, and used the scraps from this batch (pictured above) embedded in part of the soap. Should make 8-10 bars of “Chocolate Mint” soap, and 20 plain Chocolate.
Back to the title subject. A lady I know in town is opening up a new consignment store. She’ll be located in the balcony/upstairs of Keeper’s (a flower and antique shop). She flagged me down last week and asked me to sell my products there! I’m really excited – first candles at the farm and now this – I may just be able to expand this hobby into something fairly profitable. I’ve been busy making lip balm, candles, and soap – and have ingredients on the way for lotions, shampoo, conditioner, shower gel. I can always pull out if stuff doesn’t sell, and gift them for Christmas, I guess! I’m really excited for her new store, too – she’s been wanting to do this for a while.
In the house-selling area, things aren’t going so well. We finally hand a showing – but for people who really just want to rent. Let’s hope they can’t find anything they like and decide to buy instead! Sigh.