Red Door

Hello everyone! Hope you all had wonderful mothers day's! Mine was very relaxing, despite my daughter being sick with the stomach flu. She slept most of the day, and my husband entertained the boys by taking them on an adventure at his work (he manages a golf course, and the boys love riding around in daddy's golf cart!) !

I spent a few hours at the antique fair which is the second Sunday of every month in mid-town Sacramento. For some reason I really wasn't in a hunting mood, very strange for me since I usually live for the fair. I did find some fun things though, a few old rhinestone jewelry pieces, some pretty vintage tins, and two gorgeous old feather down ticking pillows for $10 each!

Our house has been busy getting things cleaned, painted and packed up for the June 1st date of putting our house officially up for sale. The picture at the top is my newly painted red front door. I can't not say this enough, "I hate packing!!" I hate moving for that matter! We have done so several times in the past years, and it doesn't get any easier the more you do it. My husband says it's cause I have too much junk, and I think he may be right! I don't like to part with anything I think my be useful to me someday, but I'm also not very organized. This can be a problem when your house is just too small!

Why are we moving then you ask? We have been mulling over the idea for about a year now, well basically since the real estate market decided to take a dump and take all our investment with it! Now usually people are very hush, hush about their money/finances, but I'm telling you this because I know we are not the only ones affected by the current state of our economy. When we purchased out home in 2005 we paid $400,000, mind you this is a 1400 sq ft , 3 bedroom home. Today our house is worth $169,900! talk about devastating! Everything we put down on our house is gone. Everything we put into the house is gone. We never intended this to be our "forever" home, since our goal has always been to someday return to Santa Cruz, where my husband is from. Our chance to move to Santa Cruz may come as soon as 2 years from now, and there is no way our house is going to jump back up to $400,000. A short sale is really the only option, since we owe more than the house is worth. Do we just stay for now, and short sale later, delaying the inevitable, or do we get this thing over with, and start to repair what has been broken now rather than later? We've cried, we've gotten angry, we've moped and been depressed, but finally realized some things are just out of your hands. We are ready to be done with this, get on with our lives and start the journey of recovery. It is deflating, and feels like we are starting all over again, when we worked so hard to become homeowners, but we are focusing on the fact that we are healthy, financially stable, and will always have a roof over our heads whether it's ours or borrowed. That's what's most important after all.

Now, off to pack up some more!