First entry

This is my first entry. I have a myspace page, but I had a bunch of weirdos trying to access it. So I decided to start a blog instead.

Today is June 1, 2007. Things have been really crazy around here the last few weeks. We've decided to move, so we'll be putting our house up for sale in a month or two. We have quite a bit of work to do to it, so it will take some time to get that taken care of. We have to paint, install carpet in the living room, steps, and hallway. We'll have to re-do the hall bathroom. It needs paint, flooring, and new fixtures. Matt has to fix the chimney b/c it has a leak. It's not as big of a project as it sounds, so that shouldn't be a big deal. But he does have to fix a leaky seal around a pipe that comes in from outside into the basement. He'll have to dig down about 6 feet on the side of the house and replace that seal. That won't be easy. I think he is hoping his dad and uncle can help with that, though.
We'll start on all the above projects once we are done throwing away a ton of stuff. The unfinished part of our basement has so much junk in it. I don't know why we kept it all. We have a ton of baby stuff that we'll want to keep in case we ever have another child, but other than that, there's not much down there that we absolutely have to have. So we'll do a lot of that over the next few weeks.
We started some spring cleaning over Memorial Day weekend, so that helps a ton.
I'm going to have to start boxing up stuff that we don't need b/c it will help reduce the amount we'll have to do later, not to mention it will look much better without the clutter. I have a friend who is starting a new home-staging business. It's where they give you tips on how to make your house more marketable just by rearranging furniture or replacing a vase here or lamp there, etc. She's going to help me for free because she said she needs the experience, so that will be great! She knows I don't want to spend money buying accessories and stuff, so she's going to try and give me ideas with furniture and decor that I already have. The main part will be de-cluttering and de-personalizing the house. She said one of the best things you can do is take down family portraits because she said that you want buyers to invision themselves in the house, not us in the house. I thought that was a very smart tip. I may keep out one 5x7 pic of the kids on the tv or something b/c i would hate to take down all my pictures. But I see what she's saying, our fireplace mantle has like 7 pictures on it. I should probably remove all of them and just put a candle on each side. Something pretty, yet simple. Of course, i'm a long way from even doing any of that. Right now, we need to start by throwing away all the stuff we don't need. I've already put a bunch on craigslist and donated a bunch of clothes and misc. items. So i'm pretty motivated.