We’re on the Hunt
A little while ago I mentioned that Shawn and I were struggling with the idea of renting vs. home-owning long term. Owning a home certainly has its rewards and financial benefits though there’s a lot more responsibility and an element of permanence. Renting is much easier from a maintenance perspective, but the investment is lost. There’s also a lack of privacy most of the time when it comes to outdoor spaces. We decided to think about it for a bit and casually browse through houses online, knowing that we had until the end of the year to take advantage of relocation benefits when it comes to closing on a new home. If something popped up and caught our eye, we’d look at it. If not, no big deal.
We love living in Chatham, New Jersey and our apartment is really nice. Being here for months to come is just fine by us. At the beginning of May, however, the half of our belongings sitting in storage was switched to a new private-storage facility. We shopped around for the most affordable option to move our items to but it still adds up. In addition, our lease ends at the end of August. We could always re-sign and keep our rent fee where it’s at, but currently have it set up to go month-to-month to give us the flexibility to leave should we find something else. With all that said, we decided a couple of weeks ago to get serious about home shopping. And why not? We’re here to stay in NJ for years to come and would prefer to have a private residence to raise Anthony in.
As I mentioned, we love Chatham and Madison. Though very pricey in comparison to other neighborhoods, we do have some options in buying a place in these towns. They’re great little communities with awesome downtowns, they’re close to lots of fabulous green spaces and trails, are known for their fabulous schools, and are only about 50 to 40 minutes away (depending on where you depart from) by train from NYC. Plus we’ve learned the immediate region so it’s familiar to us. That’s an added bonus in itself. As of this last weekend, we decided to give ourselves a few more options by taking a look at some surrounding communities too. The star in the map below indicates where we are now (very roughly speaking) in comparison to some of the other cities we’re browsing.
We’re not looking for anything too grand; in fact, we’d like to be able to say that we use every room in our home on a daily basis (outside of the guest room). A three bedroom home (our room, Anthony’s room plus a guest room/office) with some yard space would be ideal. A good kitchen is a must. Two full baths would be fantastic. We’re not looking to do any renovation work–this time we’d like to keep our customization projects to paint and maybe a floor replacement or two.
Over the last ten days or so, we’ve hit the market pretty hard. We’ve saved our favorite possibilities on all the websites, have driven past dozens to scope out neighborhoods and the exteriors, have attended several open houses and have wandered through many with our realtor. Just this last Saturday we toured one home which just may be it… our realtor found it for us and it’s pretty perfect. In fact, we just might make an offer in the next few days. Stay tuned!
All images are from Realtor.com.
I Just Joined Followgram!
I’ve been on Instagram for a couple of weeks now but just decided to set up a Followgram account to share my pics. I try to snap a variety of photos; designs I like when I see them, cool scenes from our weeknight or weekend outings, etc. Follow me!
Bag It
I’ve got a lot of baggage lately… I have bags under my eyes from sleeping less than ideally. The hospital bag is already packed and waiting for delivery day and I also have diaper bags packed and ready to go for Anthony’s arrival. I even picked out a new leather tote bag as my push present. You’d think I had every type of bag covered but when Robert of Simply Bags contacted me a couple of weeks ago about their summer beach totes, I was all ears.
Robert offered me a personalized tote bag of my very own with an embroidered name. He asked if I’d be willing to do a review here on Fixing It Fancy. While I don’t make a habit of it, of course I said yes. I chose to have Anthony’s name stitched onto the bag; seeing as how it’s a summer tote, I thought it would be good for throwing in toys and necessities for our beach trips this summer. A few days later it arrived. How cute would sand pails and shovels look packed in there eventually?
I was genuinely impressed by the bag’s high quality; there were no straying pieces of string or fabric and the embroidery work was impeccable. It’s got a little weight to it so you can feel the bag is of some substance. I like the overall size of this one too measuring 17″ wide x 14″ tall and 5.5″ wide across the bottom of the bag. It’ll hold quite a bit!
The bag’s interior doesn’t disappoint either. It’s lined and even has a little zipper pocket. That’ll be nice for storing items in at the beach that need to stay sand-free. It’s also quite roomy so there’ll be plenty of space for hauling all the goodies that come with taking Anthony anywhere.
For fun I jumped on their website and took a look at what other bag styles they offer. There’s plenty of cute beach bags to choose from–a few of my favorites are below:
So now for my review… would I recommend this bag? Yes, definitely! I’m a big believer in purchasing high-quality materials, especially bags, since for some reason they seem to wear out so quickly. The bag I received is very cute, the embroidery is a plus and best of all, it’s perfect for carrying loads of stuff in. It’s practical but stylish and I plan to use it on our beach trips for years to come.
With all that said, I’m not one of those bloggers who likes to load my site with tons of product reviews. Nobody wants to read loads of “ads” for someone else’s products and services. Please note that when I do jump on the opportunity though to review a product, it will be one that I think fits the content of this blog and one that I feel confident about recommending to others. I don’t take recommendations lightly… so trust me when I say this product is a keeper.
A Bit of News…
You guys, the house sold! Finally! We’ve closed and made it official… we no longer own our lovely Hudson house.
This transaction took ages it seemed. I’ll spare you the details, but we received our first offer back in February during moving week. That fell through a day later as the buyer decided to pull out. We then received our second (and final) offer a few weeks later in March. As the sellers, it’s sad to say we really took a beating on the transaction. After all of our blood, sweat and tears (all three quite literally) we walked away with a measly amount to call a profit but I’m choosing not to look at this from a business perspective.
I feel fortunate that we got the opportunity to own this house and we LOVED it. Thought it needed work, we learned so much we wouldn’t have otherwise. Both Shawn and I feel we’ll compare every other house to that one and felt it was perfect for us; it was just in the wrong location. Though we were only there for four years, we entertained like crazy and created a lot of memories in that house. I’m sad to see it go but feel blessed to have lived there.
Muesli Breakfast Bars
Being an almost-vegetarian (learn more about that here) I have to pay attention to how much protein I’m getting each day. Rather than snack on beans, I try and find recipes that are tasty, healthy and a good source of protein among other things. Quinoa and edamame make their way into our dinners several times throughout the week, but variety is nice.
I’ve been making these Muesli Breakfast Bars from one of Mayo Clinic’s cookbooks for a while now as they’re super tasty, really healthy and they make for a great breakfast on-the-go. I think we gorged ourselves on them too much last summer and took a break for a while. Yesterday, I craved them and rediscovered how much I love them. You should make them–they’re super easy! I’ve pasted the recipe for you below. As you can see in my pics, I substituted dried cranberries and chopped apricots for the apples and raisins.
Muesli Breakfast Bars
Ingredients
2 1/2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
1/2 cup soy flour
1/2 cup nonfat dry milk
1/2 cup toasted wheat germ
1/2 cup sliced (flaked) almonds or chopped pecans, toasted
1/2 cup dried apples, chopped
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup dark honey
1/2 cup natural unsalted peanut butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract (essence)
Directions
Preheat the oven to 325°F. Lightly coat a 9-by-13- inch baking pan with olive oil cooking spray. In a large bowl, combine the oats, flour, dry milk, wheat germ, almonds, apples, raisins, and salt. Stir well to blend, and set aside.
In a small saucepan, stir together the honey, peanut butter, and olive oil over medium-low heat until well blended. Do not let the mixture boil. Stir in the vanilla. Add the warm honey mixture to the dry ingredients and stir quickly until well combined. The mixture should be sticky but not wet.
Pat the mixture evenly into the prepared baking pan. Press firmly to remove any air pockets. Bake just until the edges begin to brown, about 25 minutes. Let cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then cut into 24 bars. When just cool enough to handle, remove the bars from the pan and place on the rack to cool completely. Store in airtight containers in the refrigerator.
Here’s what they look like all baked and ready to eat:
Image from Mayo Clinic Health Letter
And they really do come out that way! To find the recipe without my photo interruptions or to find nutrition facts click here.
Learning A New Balance
2012 seems to be all about transitions for Shawn and I. We started the year by leaving the Twin Cities area behind and said farewell to the home we worked so hard to renovate for the past four years. Now we’ve downsized to a temporary 2-bedroom apartment and are learning the ropes of our new hometown on the east coast. In addition, we find ourselves in week 33 of my pregnancy already and will soon be kissing our child-free years goodbye, though we’re ecstatic about learning our new roles as parents. As if that weren’t enough, we’re talking about house-hunting or possible condo-shopping later this fall depending on whether or not we decide owning a home is truly right for us.
Strangely, we don’t feel stressed or anxious about all of our life changes. Instead, we’re actually feeling excited, entertained and even calm as we’ve adapted with a more go-with-the-flow attitude. We both choose to hold on tight and enjoy the craziness rather than to try to control it too much and feel stressed. All of this has made me reassess this blog and whether or not the name is still a good fit, whether I should continue it altogether, and what sort of content should be posted here if I did continue.
In the past I wrote about our Hudson home renovation which spawned the name Fixing it Fancy. We turned our 110 year-old house from a wood-paneled and wall-papered mess into something we were proud to call home (see the little room icons to the right for before and afters). I also posted a lot of trip recaps and threw in a few personal posts showing off things like holiday cards and recipes I love. Of course little projects were peppered in too like Limoncello gifting and turning an old spoon-carved door into a mirror.
After a lot of thought, I’ve decided to keep Fixing It Fancy up and running and to keep the name. I think the name can imply more than fixing up a house… certainly we can fix a fancy little life for ourselves too (that was corny, but true). I’ve also decided that while giving readers new content to see here 2-3 times per week is ideal, I can’t pressure myself to come up with content. Especially with a little one coming, posting regularly just isn’t going to happen–sorry guys! Instead, I’ve opted to appreciate this blog for its journal-like qualities. It’s been a great photo album, diary and sometimes resource for asking advice. Looking through past content is a great way for Shawn and I to see the progress we made on the house and to easily look back at trip photos.
For the future, the content I post about is naturally going to change. For those of you who love a good home renovation story, I’m sorry to say you won’t find that around here any time soon. We loved owning our Hudson home but don’t plan to seriously house-hunt until the fall of this year, if we decide to go that route at all. And this time around, the most amount of work I want to do is paint and maybe lay down some new flooring or a small bathroom tile job as needed. I guess you never know though…
I still plan to keep up on trip recaps when those start up again eventually. I’d love to share a few work samples with you from time to time too. My work is a huge part of my life so sharing my designs every now again will likely become a somewhat-regular post topic. Home projects will be replaced (until we have them) with home normalcies; I’d like to share primarily vegetarian recipes we’ve come to love (we’re only meat-eaters on occasion) and of course baby updates will be here too. I hope you can appreciate that my blog content will change from our life as twenty-something yuppies who travel and renovate a house to thirty-something working, young parents who still want to get out, travel and try new things.
Of course, I have to say to the 275+ subscribers that show up on my Feedburner count daily (sometimes it goes up, I’m not sure why) that I appreciate you sticking around through our past posts and, hopefully, through future ones. While treating this blog like a scrapbook or journal is fun and at times even therapeutic, it makes me feel good that people care enough to subscribe and to comment. Thanks for that!
Our Weekend Recap Part 2
I mentioned earlier this week that we had an awesome weekend. Since Shawn and I both had Friday off for the holiday we chose to make the best of our time by visiting our favorite bookshop in NYC and making a day-trip of it. Saturday was pretty low-key and we met some friends for dinner at a microbrewery in the evening. By Sunday we were ready to sight-see our new state a little more.
We took a look at some beach recommendations online and drove down the shore to Asbury Park. Let me start by saying this beach is nice but weird. You have to drive through a somewhat-dilapidated neighborhood to get to it (we later discovered there was a much nicer area than the part we drove through with shops and restaurants) and it had me wondering what the actual beach itself would be like. We parked and saw loads of old and some abandoned buildings along the boardwalk. There were so many people there walking their dogs since it was such a nice day and we found that though the Casino and carousel (?) weren’t up and running, the arcade was open with shops and cafes. We learned that this beach was quite the spot in the 1920s and has been going through several years of revival.
I thought the boardwalk area was actually pretty cool and kitschy in its own way after walking along it for a bit. We decided to veer onto the sand and I wanted to look for sea shells. I don’t know if it was the high-tide warnings out or if it always is this way, but we found so many shells–and of a larger size too! Never having lived near the ocean this is a big deal for me. Ben was more interested in the crabs.
Note: I had Shawn take a photo of me with my swollen belly for friends and fam back home. 31 weeks down!
Those houses in the last photo above are from the next town over which our friends told us to go to instead. These were located in Ocean Grove which has a boardwalk that connects to Asbury Park’s beach. We learned that this is the beach most people go to and walk the boardwalk down to Asbury Park for its boardwalk-side restaurants and people-watching. The town itself was so charming and with all of those balconies it reminded us of New Orleans a lot.
We only ended up staying at the beach for a few hours and had about a 50-minute drive each way. It made for the perfect amount of time for getting out of the apartment and enjoying the nice weather. That brings us to the end of our awesome weekend!
I Need Your Vote!
Every once in a while I like to share a work sample that I’ve designed here on my personal blog. Do you remember my Valentine’s Day self-promotion by chance? Well, I need your vote!
Recently I entered my valentine package promotion in Neenah Paper’s UnShow (a graphic design contest for designs printed on uncoated paper) and would love your help! The 25 designs with the most votes from each category will become finalists and go before the Neenah Paper and HOW Design panel for further judging. Please take a moment to vote for me… I’d really appreciate it!
image from howdesign.com
Thanks for your support! To see the original post about this work sample, please click here.
Our Weekend Recap Part 1
Do you ever have one of those awesome weekends that you know you’ll be trying to recreate later on? The ones where you get enough play time vs. relaxation and somehow you still manage to get a few things done in between? This past weekend was one of those really good Friday through Sunday stretches that left us feeling like we’d come off of a mini-vacation at the end.
Shawn’s office was closed Friday for the holiday weekend so I took the day off as well. A fantastic prenatal doctor’s appointment on Thursday gave us the freedom and reassurance to finally take our trip into NYC by train we’ve been craving since we moved here. We started by sleeping in a bit and then catching the 10:30am train from Chatham station. Lucky for us, this train was the express so we made it to the city in about 45 minutes’ time.
We rolled into Penn Station and hopped a subway further downtown to the 14th Street/Union Square stop. Our favorite used bookstore, Strand, was just a block-and-a-half down so we spent the next hour or so browsing used books. One of my favorite things about this bookstore are the almost ceiling-high shelves filled with used hardcovers and paperbacks. I love how they tower over shoppers throughout the store.
Trying to still take it easy, we walked across the street to Cosí for lunch and split a very tasty Caesar salad. After about an hour we decided to visit a used record shop around the corner. We walked out with a couple of new vinyls, the one I’m most excited about being a jazz recording from New Orleans’ Preservation Hall (you can check out our visit to New Orleans and Preservation Hall here).
Naturally, as a girl in her third trimester, I was ready to eat again so walked two blocks to Crumbs Bake Shop. I’ve been on a baked goods-kick lately and have been anxious to try Crumbs’ cupcakes to see how they compare to a local place by our apartment. There were so many to choose from but we settled on trying the salted caramel chocolate flavor and the vanilla vanilla. Union Square is just across the street so we grabbed our cupcakes, headed for a bench in the square and sat in the sun for a bit.
Just off the square there was a farmers’ market. Our next stop being Cafe Grumpy a few blocks north, we opted to walk through the farmers’ market to get there. Though still early, it was fun to walk through loads of tents selling handmade soaps, breads, meat and eggs, and the few fruits and veggies already in season. The cafe was so close to the Flat Iron Building we chose to walk through the little sitting area out in front of it and take a few photos; the sun was in such a good spot!
Finally we arrived at Cafe Grumpy where we each grabbed a coffee and enjoyed a few minutes of people-watching. We’ve never been to Cafe Grumpy before and were really impressed with the coffee there–I think the latte I had might just be the best I ever had. It’s a well-hidden, cozy little cafe in Chelsea I believe. They change out their bean selections regularly and offer coffee flights for sampling multiple roasts.
Afterwards it was time to catch the train back home to Chatham. It was a little tight being late afternoon on the Friday of a holiday weekend but we made it in just under an hours’ time. A little worn out from our day-trip we hunkered down for a move and spent Friday night in. It was a great start to our long weekend. Saturday we spent most of the day reading and then went to dinner with some friends at a microbrewery. That brings us to our trip down the shore on Sunday which I’ll post about soon!
***Like my photos? Most are clickable to my Instagram account. Click on the images to follow me on Instagram!***
Trends I Love: Shorts With Tights
So, a bit of information I’ve not yet shared with everyone… I’ve been on bedrest due to my pregnancy the past couple of weeks as a preventative measure. Nothing serious and it’s only until week 32 (2 weeks to go!). With a lot less running around the house to get chores done and a lot less being active outside, I’ve had some free time on my hands. I came across this spring trend the other day that I think is really cute and thought I would share it in lieu of a home project or a fun weekend get-away recap (I know; not as fun to read about but it’s something). How do you feel about shorts with tights?
I’m so into it I bought myself some preggo shorts at Target for cheap and have already worn them several times. Maternity tights are definitely not very comfortable but pain is beauty. Here’s my pregnant lady version I’ve worn a few times:
Awesome shorts, right? To make them look a little (or a lot) better I roll the ends to make little cuffs. Also, the super-sexy blue panel is obviously hidden… though I personally feel less awesome knowing it’s there. I pair the shorts with a black three-quarter-length sleeve top I have similar to this one that also has lace around the collar. I then finish off the look with my flat black suede boots and my favorite sweater from H&M along with my black cuff bracelet (similar to the one shown) I got while visiting New Orleans. I think it works and it makes me feel like I can be fashion-forward even while pregnant.
What do you think about shorts paired with tights? Into it? Not so into it? Any other trends I should look at and try to convert to a pregnant-girl version?
